Why Dot-Coms Fail - a Webmaster's Perspective

Why Dot-Coms Fail - a Webmaster`s Perspective

Everyday we hear that another organization goes out of company.

When and why does a dot-com become a dot-bomb?

After checking few dozen defunct businesses, I think the main reasons for dot-coms failure are:

Poor business enterprise plan. In the last years, many investment cash was spent on poorly planned firms that clearly couldn`t reach profitability.

Poor firm promotion. This applies both offline and on the net. Two newspaper ads and word of mouth are not enough.

Poor financial management. Fancy offices, free food, does it ring a bell?

Poor Human Resources management. With lots of cash in their hands, numerous start-up providers hired too lots of people or, even worse, hired unqualified staff. The hiring of friends and relatives often returned no value on investments.

Errors in the company`s Net site. Sometimes hundreds of errors could be found in 1 Net page. Yes, those Net site builders should go back to school- if they ever went to school for HTML at all.

I`ll focus my comments around the last reason:

How Errors in the Net Site Can Affect the Company`s Health

It really is clear that you are able to make income online if you have customers. You have customers if you have viewers- "traffic" in the geek`s language. And you get traffic if your site is easy to obtain -- near the top -- in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). That`s not so simple to achieve.

First of all your site has to be indexed by the search tools: Search Engines and Web Directories.

Although some Search Engines will eventually locate your site by themselves, most of the time this only happens if somebody links to your site. In the case of a NEW site, having existing links is almost impossible. Rather than wait for links to become made, start off a submission campaign.

A big no-no is submitting a Net site utilizing submission software. Working with software of this type might be quick and simple, but some Net Directories and Search Engines don`t accept automated submissions.

It`s true that manual submission is a time consuming process -- you`ll have to read AND follow each Search Engines` submission guidelines, to effectively carry out the submission - but it is a necessary step.

Most of the defunct sites I`ve checked had only a modest presence and visibility in the Search Engines.

Let`s say that you submitted your site correctly, you waited a reasonable amount of time - usually few weeks - for the Search Engines to process your submission, but your site does not appear near the top in the Search Engine Results Pages.

You`re wondering why, proper? Well, 1 or much more of the following reasons may apply:

1) Your submission was not accepted by the Search Engines. If you used spamming techniques, such as:

Repeating keywords in the keyword meta tag or using text in the same color as the background, some Search Engines could refuse to index your site.

Page redirection -- including cloaking -- or developing artificial links farms can sometimes be seen as spam by some Search Engines. These links farms involve creating Web pages for the sole purpose of building links to the targeted site. For a lot more about spam please read my article:

"Search Engine Spamming Sucks!" ( (http://www.web-design-in-new-york.com/articles.html) )

Some Search Engines also have difficulty in indexing pages that use frames or Flash.

2) Your submission was accepted, but your site is not listed in the Top 10-30. Because incredibly few persons check pages after the first thirty results, you want to be in the Top 10-30. There are several reasons why a site is not listed high.

The most common reasons are:

The lack of your main keywords in the content of the page, in the Title tag and in the Description and Keyword meta tags. Ultimately it all depends of the Search Engines` algorithm- the criteria used by the Search Engines to rank pages.

HTML errors. Examples include unclosed tags, unquoted attributes, improperly nested tags, missing the ALT attribute on images. Any of these will affect your site`s accessibility, reducing your potential client pool.

A Web site with HTML errors can look fine in Explorer, strange in Netscape or Opera and totally unreadable in a text browser. Although Explorer has the largest market share, an important percentage of internet surfers use other browsers. Do not forget the much more than 50 million people in the USA with disabilities. Many of the latter use text/voice browsers.

Other Types of Errors in Web Sites

Proper HTML coding is pretty important but the structure and the layout of the pages are equally important. I saw sites without having ANY solution to contact the business: no email address, no "contact page". I saw sites so crowded that it was almost impossible to locate my way around. I saw sites with ugly color schemes. I saw a site so "heavy" that it took nearly three minutes to download the Home Page.

According to statistics, users have very limited patience when it comes to loading a page. If after eight seconds they cannot see the page, they leave. And we all know what that means or the success of a Internet site.

I not only saw all those errors in sites that are now gone but I also found them in sites that are still alive, including, extremely, some Fortune 500 companies` Net sites.

So Do We Dot-Com or Not?

The answer is a resounding YES! But with just one condition, learn from your predecessors.

How can a dot-com become successful? I don`t pretend to know All the answers. If I did, I would be millionaire by now.

Advice for Forming and Managing Your Provider:

Develop a sound enterprise plan, with clear, credible strategies to receive to profitability. Venture capitalists are significantly extra cautious than a few years ago. They invest less and are extra selective in this risky organization. They want value returned for their cash. After all, statistics show that 9 out of 10 startups fail.

Handle your money wisely. Enough said.

Hire only the people today you Genuinely will need and be sure ALL of them are specialists.

Advice Regarding the Internet Site that Supports Your Organization:

Do the correct thing when you prepare the Internet site. Hire reputable experts to build and promote your cyber adventure. If you already possess a Internet site, remember that a Net site can easily be redesigned and properly resubmitted to search tools.

Have your site designed according to W3C Recommendations - the Official HTML coding rules. Yes, this takes time and it`s considerably easier to use an HTML editor, but the results are a lot better when properly coded by hand. Watch your site`s accessibility and usability. Don`t forget to test and validate the code. Talking about testing, do yourself a favor: check the spelling on your pages.

Do not use spamming techniques. You could not be caught at this time, but one particular day the Search Engines OR your competitors will obtain you. Search Engines sometimes will use this reason to ban your site FOR LIFE.

For extra about spam please read my article:

"Search Engine Spamming Sucks!" ( (http://www.web-design-in-new-york.com/articles.html) )

Avoid gizmos: JavaScripts, Flash or frames. Bells and whistles will NEVER help your page` ranking. In fact, it will hurt your site`s indexing or ranking in the Search Engines and will annoy most of your viewers. So, just don`t do it!

Have interesting content in your pages, content that grabs your viewer`s attention. No matter how beautiful your site is, no matter how a lot qualified promotion you made, if the site doesn`t grab viewer`s interest, he will leave - you guessed it -- to your competitors` sites.

Also, use the Title tag, the Keyword and Description meta tags in your HTML coding to list targeted keywords from the contents of your pages. This helps the Search Engines rank your site higher.

Promote the site thoroughly. Submit the site properly to Search Engines and Net Directories and pay special attention to the link popularity issue- contact Webmasters of related sites to ask them to include a link to your site. Yes, it takes time, but it`s worth it.

So, let`s see: do we dot-com or not? You bet we do! There are tremendous opportunities around the World wide web. Find your niche, follow the rules, perform hard and you will make it.

It will not be quick but if you believe in your dream and set realistic expectations, you will be successful.

Fantastic luck!

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