We would NOT be surprised if you are struggling with your current website. That’s because we were actually in the same situation not too long ago…

When we were starting out, we didn’t have the easiest time developing websites. Which is somewhat of an understatement.

We tried and failed to build our own websites that were profitable. We couldn’t get the right design, the right content, and bring enough traffic to our websites!

Out of desperation, we decided to try one last thing. We created a plan to buy two websites which were already producing revenue! If one of them worked, we thought maybe we could improve from there…

So, that’s exactly what we did, we bought two different websites. Much to our dismay, one of them quickly crashed and burned. But we were fortunate that the other one, a kitchen design website, kept making a little money.

So we turned all our attention to that kitchen design website. We studied it and maintained it. And after we figured out how to run it correctly, we improved it further. In fact, we were able to increase its revenue by 320%. Not bad!

We achieved that by improving the content and the placement of the content on the site. Then, using what we learned, we decided to buy another site and try to repeat the process.

And so we bought another site. And another. Until we had acquired 12 sites in total. Every time we bought a new site we were excited to learn new techniques, new systems, and new strategies.

Actually, there is NO secret at all!

We just took all the experiences from our initial 12 websites and applied them in the new project! We also collaborated with experts to apply new techniques in web development.

This breakthrough helped us to combine everything we learned! We developed a series of systems that helped us to effectively build successful, well-built websites. We came up with a system that enabled us to help others develop their own websites.

Since then, we have helped many small businesses improve their websites! We used different strategies developed from our experiences in developing our own websites.

We are sharing our story to help you deal with the challenges of running your own website. Because running your own website is definitely a big challenge! Like we mentioned, our journey started with a healthy dose of failure before we were able to figure things out.

So now, let us share some of the key things we learned which you can also apply to your current website and avoid the pain of going in the wrong direction.

There are four important steps in developing your website:

How effective is your design in getting visitors and sales to your website?

In one of our tests, we wanted to see what the effect would be on a website when ONLY a redesign was applied to it. This means, without changing the content on the page (any of the wording or images).

During the testing process we found out something quite surprising to us at the time. We found that users behaved differently on each of the different designs we created. Visitors were more (or less) likely to click on an ad or call-to-action depending on where it was placed on the page.

The results weren’t minor, like just a few percentage points. In some cases, we saw wild swings where a page could increase its performance by more than half or drop the results down so low it was barely performing.

In hindsight, and with experience, we have come to understand the logic behind those changes. It has to do with where the elements are placed so they are easy to access and visually that they are easy to see.

And remember, we’re talking about the placement of the design here! We’re not even considering how appealing the design is. Which also has an additional influence on behavior.

By implementing the structural blueprint approach of the wireframing, and combining it with design elements to build visual appeal we begin to have an exact website vision in mind.

Once this is perfectly in place, we can move onto the technical work of coding the website.

Content attracts… (1) Hungry Visitors and (2) Fast Action

Visitors are primarily consumers. Visitors come to consume content, whether they want to find your hours, get a quote, or learn about your services. So, it’s important to have good quality, clear, and informative content.

By creating content, you improve your chances of getting visitors. If you have good content then search engines will reward you with more visitors. And other users will link to your content and this will help you to get even more visitors.

Since content is so critical to a site’s success we devoted a lot of work to our content development processes. We have made 10k+ pieces of content; including e-books, landing pages, and blog articles. And this content has brought in a lot of traffic, currently at 22,398,157 views and counting…

To maximize the power of your content, be sure to use topics that your viewers can easily relate with… like something related to new trends in fashion, entertainment, sports, and the like…

You have read about the four steps to building a new website! How was your own experience with those 4 steps?