Do you want or need a successful website?

What does it take to build and maintain a successful website?

Maybe you've finally decided that you definitely need a website but you're not sure where to begin. Or maybe you have a website and are highly frustrated because it isn't doing what you thought it was going to do for you or your business. Whatever the situation is, the information on this page will help you quickly understand what you need to do to have a successful website.

First and foremost, we need to determine what you consider a "successful website" to be. In other words, what do you want to gain from having a website? When people tell me that they want a website, my first question is "What do you want the website to do for you?"

Hi, my name is Henry James Reeves, Owner and Software Designer of HJR SOFTWARE and Website Developer of many websites for well over 10 years. Thanks for your interest in HJR SOFTWARE and for reviewing my Recipe For A Successful Website.

The most popular answers that I receive when I ask people what they want their website to do for them are:

1. To increase my business by generating new customers (i.e.: Make us more Money).
2. To serve as a resource and answer questions for people that I send to my website.
3. To report results of our business.
4. To provide directions to our location.
5. To make it easy for us to obtain information from our clients.

The #1 answer is that most people want their website to Make Money for them or help them make money by delivering to them qualified leads or actual new sales.

A website can do all of these things and more. However, to get a website to consistently do any of these things often, the website needs to be strategically designed to do so as well as properly marketed to receive repeated visits by your target market to achieve the desired results.

The focus of this page is to present you with an overview of what is needed in order to have a successful website on the Internet. I approach this from start to finish as if you are a beginner who has never had a website. The information is just as helpful for experienced and expert website developers as well. I let you know the essential elements necessary to register a site name, host the site, build an interface, market it, analyze the results, and tweak what needs to be tweaked to keep the website running smoothly and successfully. With this information, you will be more qualified to speak to us or anyone else about actually going through the steps necessary to get you from whatever point you are at now to where you want to be which is to have a successful website on the Internet.

Imagine, if you wanted to bake a cake from scratch and you wanted the end results to be a successful cake, you would start with a recipe, add the required ingredients and some skill to put it altogether, mix it up, bake it, then decorate it and serve it as desired. The proof of its success would be in its great taste and the compliments you received from those that tasted it.

Baking a successful Internet website works the same way. You need to start with the right recipe for success, add the appropriate ingredients, set it in motion to bake, establish a method of inviting or allowing people to taste it and then checking their experience and yours to determine whether or not it works well and does what it was designed to do.

HJR SOFTWARE's Recipe for a Successful Website

Below is my Recipe for a Successful Website or at least the ingredients for one. The proper procedures for putting together this recipe have not been included here because building successful websites is one of my specialties and I charge fairly and reasonably for website hosting, website development and search engine optimization (seo) and marketing services. I have listed the ingredients for free along with an overview of why each ingredient is important to a successful website.

• Site Idea Research and Analysis
• Site Name Selection
• Site Name / Domain Name Registration
• Website Hosting
• Website Development and Deployment
• Website and Search Engine Analysis
• Website Search Engine Optimization
• Website Search Engine Marketing
• Search Engine Submission
• Additional Marketing (Online and Offline)
• Collaboration and Linking
• Review and Inspection
• Tweaks and Adjustments

As you begin preparing to create your successful website, jot down your ideas and organize your thoughts. Draft your visual ideas being sure to incorporate elements of your own styles that appeal to you. Keep in mind that the most successful websites include presentation of related ideas across multiple pages, inter-active components for website visitors to be able to quickly access the information, product and/or services they are interested in, and online requests or ordering mechanisms. Keywords identify main ideas expressed on each page and as you organize the content you want displayed on each page you'll be able to tie such information to them. As you continue to organize your ideas, consider the name of your website. Some will want to use their business or organization name and others will register names based on functionality, appeal, and/or marketing strategies. Once you have a draft of the goals of your website, some of it content and desired name options, start shopping for website hosting companies.

Depending on your needs, different hosting models are available. Website hosting is diskspace used to house the coding, text, graphics, information and content of your website. Although just about anyone with a computer accessible to the Internet can configure it to be used as a webserver, determining which type of website hosting to use is like choosing where to house a traditional business. For instance, do you need to buy land and build an office building or are you going to be well served by renting office space? If you rent, what amenities need to come with the rent you pay (such as a marquee with the name of your company on it, phone services, a shared secretary, and other possibilities)? These days most people choose to rent website hosting services. With rented hosting plans they might get domain name registration (website name reservation), tools for building the website (online website editor, built-in web components), search engine submission tools, website design templates, toll-free phone services, and other features. Most shared website hosting plans are offered by hosting companies that have reputable and reliable webservers located in a data center that is sufficiently managed by qualified personnel to oversee computer hardware operations. The amount of diskspace that you need will depend on the amount of content you need to house on your website. Text is relatively small, while graphics, sound and pictures can be very large. You'll choose a plan that also encompasses something known as bandwidth. Each time a webpage is displayed, it contains X amount of data in bytes. Most hosting companies count the number of bytes transferred each month (just like your cell phone company may count the number of minutes you use) and if you go over the amount of bandwidth allotted by your choosen plan, you may encounter additional charges beyond your normal plan rate. Estimate your bandwidth usage by estimating your anticipated average number of visitors daily and multiplying that number by the number of bytes in each page times about 30 days in each month. Choose a plan that offers enough bandwidth, diskspace and other features to cover your needs.

Webpages use a variety of programming languages to present content and provide interaction. If you know HTML, Javascript, SQL, and/or other languages such as PHP, ASP, VB Script, Python, CGI, Flash, or others, then you will be able to program your own website. If the hosting plan offers a website builder or website templates, you may be able to build your site yourself at no additional charges (free website development). However, most beginners and even novices may need to inlist the services of a professional website developer to assist them with getting their website stored online, developed, and operational. I suggest finding someone that is knowledgeable in all areas of website development, including several different languages, different website platforms, offers website hosting services, website development, search engine optimization and marketing, as well as someone who can take on projects from any point within their development and help you get your website to where you want it to be. While I'm sure there are quite a few qualified individuals and organizations offering these services, my best recommendation, albeit biased, is HJR SOFTWARE. You'll find that I offer all the services you need along with plans on different platforms, experience and expertise with most languages and databases available on the Internet, the ability to integrate and incorporate your ideas into a successful working website, marketing tools and experience to recommend, suggest, and implement successful marketing campaigns, along with additional support services, hardware, phone services, and everything else you need to successfully get your website doing what you want it to do. I also have a pool of resources that I collaborate with and/or have partnered with to offer you the website look and feel you want, English or Spanish translations for multilingual appeal, advertising and marketing avenues to use to promote your website and additional funding techniques to help you maximize the potential of any and all traffic generated by your website.

As you build your website, you'll want to start your search engine marketing campaign. You'll want to contact your associates, competitors and others to establish linking relationships. You'll want to promote and expose your website to non-Internet marketing materials as well.

All of these ingredients may not be applicable to your website but most of them will be in some degree and some point in time as you strive to make your website a success. Contact me at HJR SOFTWARE and let me assist you with your website development, webhosting, search engine optimization and website marketing endeavors so that we can make your website a success on the Internet.

Some of the websites that I host, have assisted with, designed, developed, own, operate, promote, and/or market are listed on the testimonials, links and clients pages of this website. Check them out and see for yourself the diverse nature of these sites. As permissions come in to list more of these sites, you'll see even more evidence of my abilities to help make your website a success.

As your website is up and running, turn on statics and analysis tools or subscribe to external resources for tracking page views and interactive hits on your website. Update your content periodically and keep it fresh. Continuously keep adding link partners within your industry. Submit your website to search engines. Analyze the results and make adjustments and tweaks where necessary to keep your pages as close to the top of search engines as possible.

When you do these things consistently, this recipe for a successful website will produce just that. However, this is one cake that you might want a professional to cook for you. You can certainly try this on your own and many people and organizations do, only to discover that although the list of ingredients may be short, putting this type of cake together takes some talent, skill and experience and unless you are committed to doing what is necessary over the long haul, baking a good website cake can really be a challenge. I have the recipe. I keep the ingredients on hand. I know how to whip them all up and put them into the cooker. So place your order and let me work my magic. It takes a while, anywhere from 3 to 6 months to start getting some decent results. Even then, we need to continue your marketing campaign throughout the useful life of your site in order to keep it successful as time goes on and competition changes.

Again, thank you for reviewing my recipe. I know that if you implement any of the ideas discussed here, you'll be better off than not doing anything. Please feel free to leave any comments you would like to leave regarding this information and/or your experiences with implementing any of the concepts presented here. Use the form below to sign-up for any of the related services that I offer. For a limited time, special pricing on my website services is available by signing up using this page. Whatever you do, continued success to you in all your website endeavors.