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Why Websites Fail

There are number of reasons why websites fail. This article will go through the reasons and use examples as well.

Ignoring the Competition
The first example I can think of here is MySpace. MySpace lost the social war to Facebook. But they used to be at the top...what happened? For those that remember MySpace, it was ugly. Incredibly ugly. I'm sure a lot of people said things like "Why are you on MySpace? Facebook is so much cooler and it doesn't have animated backgrounds and autoplay music!" Let's not forget the ads. MySpace had huge, obtrusive ads. Blinking text. Changing colors. It was annoying. I'm sure the ads drove people away to Facebook also. As Facebook continued to get more popular, MySpace did not nothing about it and paid the price for it. MySpace was bought by News Corp for 580 million dollars and was sold to Specific Media for 35 million. Ouch.

Competing in the Wrong Category
I don't know about you but I wouldn't want to make a website to help people sell books. Amazon. eBay. Sure, someone will try this and they may even succeed but the odds are against them. Even if someone didn't know what Amazon or eBay was and they searched Google for the term "sell used books" Amazon's ad would be right at the top. Amazon has lots of money and can probably buy that ad spot for the next one thousand years.

Giving Up Too Quickly
Someone makes a website and three months in, they only get 15 unique visitors a day. They shut down the site. Big mistake. A website is one link away from greatness. What if that person stayed with the site a little longer and they got a link from CNN? The New York Times? TechCrunch? It's a possibility. I do not have a specific example here but I'm sure millions of bloggers have done this. They started a blog with hopes of hitting the big time only to give up a few months later.

Not Taking Advantage of Social Media
Someone starts a new site and posts original pictures, videos, and articles. They share this stuff with their friends and that's it. Another big mistake. The owner of that site should have accounts with Tumblr, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, and deviantART. All of those websites are among the most visited websites on the entire Internet. All of them fall within the Alexa top 200. That's where all the people are. You can cast a little net or a big net. Cast the big net. An example here would be the countless blogs that try to achieve fame and end up being just another blog on the Internet.

posted on 2012-05-28

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