How to Choose Your Website Direction: Six Strategic Approaches
When deciding what type of website to build, a powerful strategy is to analyze existing competitors and identify opportunities for improvement. Here are six common strategies for selecting your website's focus, each based on observing and enhancing the current market landscape.
1. The Quality Improvement Strategy
If you find a website that is generally good but has clear flaws in user experience, design, or functionality that frustrate you, you can create an improved or optimized version. Your goal is to solve the original site's pain points and deliver a superior, smoother experience.
2. The Quantity Expansion Strategy
When you discover a site with high-quality content but insufficient volume to meet deeper needs, you can build a more comprehensive website with richer content. This may involve a mix of manual creation and automated data collection (e.g., web scraping) to provide greater information density.
3. The Quality & Quantity Enhancement Strategy
If you enjoy using a website but feel it doesn't go far enough, you can attempt to create a site that surpasses the original in both quality and breadth, offering a more complete and satisfying experience.
4. The Integration & Simplification Strategy
When users need to visit multiple websites (Site A, B, C) to fulfill a single need, you can create a Site D that consolidates the core features or content from those sites. This simplifies the user's workflow into a one-stop solution.
5. The Vertical Specialization Strategy
If an existing website's content is too broad and you only need a specific subset, you can build a highly focused, niche site dedicated solely to that particular information or service you and your target audience truly require.
6. The Innovation & Creation Strategy
When you identify a complete lack of a certain type of website you need in the market, you can immediately start building an entirely new category of site to fill that gap.
Core Principles for a Successful Website
Regardless of the strategy you choose, a successful website should follow these core principles to create a win-win situation for all parties:
- You Enjoy It: As the creator, you are passionate about the site and enjoy the process of building and running it.
- Visitors Enjoy It: Users can easily find the information they need and receive a positive, valuable experience.
- Search Engines 'Enjoy' It: The site has a clear structure, high-quality content, and follows SEO best practices, making it easy to index and rank.
- Advertisers Enjoy It (if applicable): The site has healthy traffic and a well-defined audience, providing an effective channel for advertisers (if using an ad-based revenue model).
Note: This article was inspired by insights from internet entrepreneur Andy, reorganized and expanded upon.