The Secrets of a Great Website

I have been thinking about the question, what makes a website great? Why are some websites destined for greatness and others heading towards online mediocrity?

Last night I attended an event that brought me some way towards answering my question. I had the pleasure of hearing Jim Buckmaster, the CEO of Craigslist speak. For those of you in the UK who don’t know Craigslist, you will be surprised to hear that it is the seventh largest English language website in the world. Craigslist is one of the survivors of the first dotcom bubble - founded in San Francisco 12 years ago - and currently operates in 50 countries around the world, with 15 million unique users.

Craigslist is basically an online community bulletin board where users can post almost anything they want to for free. There is nothing glitzy about this site as, shock horror, they don’t even have a logo! Most of the company’s £16 million a year in revenues comes from charging companies to post job adverts in 7 American cities. Your everyday Joe gets to use the site for free.

The Craigslist ethos has remained the same from the start – only do what the customer wants. Jim Buckmaster said in his talk that his customers want a simple site. They want local information that is easy to access and they want this for free. They don’t want pop up advertising or fancy designs. Craiglist’s changes and improvements over the past 12 years have been made as a result of customer feedback. They didn’t set out to dominate the world, as they only set up on cities where the customers wanted the service.

So, in summary, the secrets to a great website are:

1. Aim to completely satisfy your customer base.
2. Stick to your company values.
3. Don’t start out promising that you will do one thing and then let your customer down.
4. Take every opportunity that you can to ask for feedback. Listen to what your customer thinks and do what you can to please them.

As an online marketer I always tell my clients that I can increase traffic to their websites, but I can’t guarantee that people will buy. It’s all about the customer at the end of the day and if they don’t like your website or if they don’t trust you as an online business, then they won’t bother. This is especially important in 2007, with web users conversing and interacting in the world of Web 2.0.

About the Author
Kate Little is the Director of Com.Motion, a leading Internet Marketing Company. Visit Com.Motion to discuss how we can help your company increase its online sales through our comprehensive Online Advertising and Search Engine Optimisation programme.