WRONG: If You Build It, They Will Come

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WRONG: If You Build It, They Will Come

Saturday, 22 August 2009 00:01

How you launch a website is important as to how you build a website. Poor website execution can lead to project failure. Proper execution ensures your site is ready for your intended audience.

I have a personal project (I will call ProjectH) in development that I work on in my spare time. ProjectH is targeted towards a specific audience within a specific topic. Competition is minimal. The topic is exploding and expanding. The current status includes lots of researched, original content. The content is presented in a unique format; more user friendly than my competitors. I have spent the past year pre-marketing this website and have thousands of targeted users ready to be notified on site launch. I should be good to go, right?

The truth is; if I were to launch ProjectH today, it would be nothing more than a pretty directory that my competitors could easily copy. ProjectH would attract attention in the beginning but once my competitors use the same format: my site fails. The countless hours and thousands of dollars I have spent on this project over the past year would be useless because of poor execution.

ProjectH is not centered around social activities (such as Twitter or Facebook) but the social aspect is the glue which will keep the site active and growing. With sites like these I learned to trim down on social features and "hide" the users from each other. You do not want to make socializing easy in the beginning or your site will appear dead. An example of this includes hiding all forums, buddy systems, etc while enabling article commenting. Launch the social features after the site attracts return and dedicated users.

Features should be kept to a bare minimum. Especially beta features. Ask yourself: what would encourage your users to create an account at your website? Then, allow users to request add-ons in which THEY WANT in order to increase demand for your website. Let them be the developers and your project will always head in the right direction.

For ProjectH: currently there is no reason for my targeted audience to create user accounts and therefore the glue I need will not manifest. This oversight can also lead to failure. I have features in progress but only the ones that will demand a user's attention when ProjectH is launched. You have to make your site feel exclusive and special enough for someone to give up their information and create an account.

I discovered the above about ProjectH over the past few weeks. No matter how original the content or how minimal the competition: I just could not justify the launch of my project. But, it did inspire this article and I was able to launch something after all. ;)

Take care and have a great weekend, guys (and girls!).

Tia Wood

Comments (6) Add comments

Anthony David August 22, 2009

I found it interesting how you talked about hiding the things like forums even after its built. I have never considered doing this before. You're right when you just start a forum on a site, its a ghost town, and that sucks a lot, but I think every site has to start somewhere. But all the things Ive built before including trade portals at first didnt have one product listed, and logistics portal, not one single lead, and forum was all "zeros" for the post count. But after some time they all slowly start getting a little content. Someone asks a question, another answers, then another person makes a new post, its like a really slow rolling snowball.

But youre right that nowadays, if you built it, it doesnt mean anyone will come. Every site needs some marketing to get people in. But if the content of the site is really useful and helpful to people, instead of more information overload, I think whoevers marketing has a much easier job. And once the site gets users, those social features like forums will slowly start getting filled up, they always do.

Tia Wood August 22, 2009

"But after some time they all slowly start getting a little content. Someone asks a question, another answers, then another person makes a new post, its like a really slow rolling snowball."

It might depend on the risks involved. With ProjectH, I can't wait for a slow rolling snowball; I need an avalanche.

In my opinion, the "illusion of emptiness" plays on the psychology aspects of user habits: would you feel a site is less authoritative if it appears empty? If the site is worth my time: why isn't anyone "talking"? You have to be careful not to create that false sense for users.

Anthony

Well, there's always adwords, which can get you instant traffic ...if you're willing to pay for it. I also like to make these "community" type of sites, I did it before with my site freightforum.com and basically dropped about $1000 on adwords over two or three months to get some users into a website that just wont function without the users. Thankfully it worked and there is some really loyal visitors there now.

With my new site Winterwind.com I'm not spending anything advertising it and trying to only use social media (facebook, twitter, and blogging) actually I've found its not as effective as Adwords, but at least there's no expenses this way.

From my experience I don't think an avalanche is possible for any site. Youtube videos can go viral, but not websites. Search engines slowly index your pages, slowly add page rank, userbase slowly grows. Everything is so slow! But, maybe slow and steady can still win the race.

Richard Alcorn

Certainly avalanches occur, but they have to be fostered. I have had numerous sites get extremely powerful surges; many of them then fall off if you don't do anything to augment and help it, but a new idea can certainly got lots of traffic to start. For me, that has never been the problem, although I certainly work to make sure that it happens. Keeping focused on a single idea and being patient enough with a concept to make it work in the long run are the hard parts. Personally, I don't know if I much like the idea of "hiding" anything, but I might not roll out certain features until the site has been up for a while. Personally, a steady add on to a site's functionality seems to work best. That said, I too am in the process of completing a major project that I will be rolling out in the next few months for affiliate marketers and I'm waiting until I have everything in perfect working order before I go forward with anything. I have no doubt, however, that I'll get an "avalanche" when I open the doors, lol. You can't just build it and expect them to come; they have to know about it and that is your biggest job, but it doesn't have to be the hardest. Lean on the power of your existing customer/client base. For instance, instead of offering a discount to existing customers/members/clients, I usually set up an account for them automatically and send them a message from whatever program they've already signed up for with a title of something like "Your Bonus Membership Login In For Blah Blah Blah." Your signatures in the forums, links on the other pages and your email list can be extrmely powerful. I've also been known to tie in my databases and when a user logs into their account, they get a welcome page that tells them about their new membership, whether it be a trial or a program that is free and unlimited." I now have members for multiple programs without even waiting for them to sign up. Of course, you always offer an opt out method, but in my experience very few people ask you to do away with anything you've given them for free. Of course, I also have my peer to peer advertising that helps a lot, lol. Best Wishes.

Tia Wood September 13, 2009

Great advice, Richard. Thank you!

Mark November 11, 2010

A new site can always start off with features that can be executed simply but well and which maybe go after longer-tail keywords and so on.

Meanwhile you can work away in the background at the harder to execute stuff while you slowly build up an audience. This stuff can be hidden away on your site, getting indexed, but not getting many visitors to start with.

Then the $64,000 question is judging when you have enough readers and also when your content is good enough to move the new and difficult content into a more prominent place on your site.

It's always a tough call to make and one I for one find very hard to do as it's a risky process if you go for it too early.

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Last Updated on Sunday, 31 January 2010 14:34

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