Things To Do When Starting A New Site - Part 1

As you know, I recently started a new Eco-Gadgets website called EnviroGadget.com. In this article, I’ll share a list of things you must do when first starting a new website to give it the best possible chance of becoming a success.

1. Think about your niche

Before you start any website, make sure you know your site’s niche. If you’re interested and knowledgeable about a particular niche, you are far more likely to make your site a success. The enthusiasm and domain knowledge gives you an edge to profit from a niche compared to your competition.

If your school of thought is just “cos it’d be cool to do”, that probably will mean you’ll struggle to run your site in the long term, let alone make it profitable. If your niche is a popular one, such as the make money online or technology topics, work out how you intend to stand out from the rest.

There is considerable information on choosing a niche, so I’ll just reference more reading material from DoshDosh on niche blogging, ProBlogger on niche blogging and Performancing on niche choice.

2. Decide on the [Realistic] revenue streams

Ensure that you know how your site will make money. If your site is a product review site, then you might use affiliate marketting. If your site is a mini-tool, then banner advertising might be more appropriate. More information from Steve Pavlina and Daily Blog Tips on making money from your site.

3. Choose a domain name

Again, there are plenty of resources on this. Google for “choosing a domain name” for more information. SEOmoz has 12 rules for choosing the right domain name, and SitePoint has a brief article on domain choice.

If you’re starting a blog, I strongly recommend against having a free blog from any of the free blog services (such as Blogger.com and Wordpress.com). Free blogs give the impression that you’re not serious about your website, and that you could disappear any day. Do some research, read some web hosting reviews, get some good quality hosting and buy your own domain to install Wordpress yourself. It will benefit you in the long run.

4. Choose your content management system (CMS)

Are you going to use Wordpress as a base system? Are you going to use Joomla? Perhaps a shopping cart like CubeCart or ZenCart? Consider who will be managing the site, and if the CMS is appropriate for the content creators. Consider how extensible the CMS will be and how easy it will be to maintain.

5. Decide on your content source

The age of copyright is becoming a firm issue in blogging these days, so you want to make sure you have high quality and unique content. Aside from copyright infringement, having decent content gives your visitors a reason to return to your website. Content in this context is meant in the broadest sense of the word, including products, online tools (e.g. page rank checkers, blog pingers, etc) as well as article content.

If you’re going to get authors to write content for your site, consider the cost, how you will maintain high quality and where you can find the authors.

6. Decide on advertising locations

If you are using advertising banners or context-advertising, then decide where you place it. Don’t annoy visitors with pop-unders or over-use of adverts. Place them in plain sight, but don’t put them in the way. You might decide to avoid advertising for 6 months to allow the site to grow first, followed by a slow introduction of adverts.

7. Track your visitors

Use Google Analytics and FeedBurner statistics to help you monitor your readership to the site. Place careful emphasis on organic traffic from search engines (i.e. as non-paid), as this is the best way to grow the site in the long term. Learn to associate peaks in traffic with positive changes you make, as you also make associations with negative effects on traffic.

8. Deliver content through RSS and email

Some people like RSS, others prefer email. Make sure you give visitors the chance to choose their preferred method of receiving updates about your site.

9. Sitemaps - for search engines and readers

Sitemaps allow search engines and visitors to find content on your site. Clearly if search engines have access to all your content, you improve the chance that someone will find your site. Don’t forget that visitors will find your site via the search engines with the weirdest of search terms that you never even considered (but still appear in your text somehow).

Having access to all previous articles in a flat layout will allow dedicated readers to easily read your best content. I suggest something like the Clean Archives plugin for Wordpress.

You could even have a conventional sitemap (a single long list of pages) if you wish too, but that would be a little hard for visitors to navigate. The archive plugin mentioned above breaks up the content into sections ordered by date.

10. Let your visitors contact you

Make it as easy as possible for visitors to contact you from the website. The best way is to have a HTML form on the site where visitors fill in their details, which then emails you. If you ask visitors to copy and paste your email address, you’re much less likely to get any emails. If you mask your email address from spam-bots, consider the effort required by the visitor to correctly extract your email address.

If you’re using wordpress, something like WP Contact Form III is worthwhile and simple.

Continuum

Part 2 of Things To Do When Starting A New Site will be available next week!