Ask HN: What is that one deciding factor that makes a website successful? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is that one deciding factor that makes a website successful?

35 pointsziggystardust31 comments

I have known a lot of people who have ventured into the 'website' business and found the initial success and disappeared after a while.

I'm curious about what makes the successful ones successful . I've seen beautifully designed, high quality content sites fail.

so I've come to the conclusion that the key factor is scaling. even if you've programmed your site to scale, unless you pour in the dough to scale your servers and allow more people to come in you're gonna fail. Is this the deciding factor? what according to you is that one deciding factor?

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This is like asking "what is that one deciding factor that makes a small business successful?"

It is too broad and so there is no one deciding factor. You don't even have a clear definition of success. Is http://lawcomic.net/ successful? It has a loyal following, but it doesn't update that much, or earn much money for its creator.

> "what is that one deciding factor that makes a small business successful?"

Actually, there is an answer to that, and it's the answer to OPs question.

Customers.

It doesn't make a lick of difference how well (or how badly) you do anything else - you might have great customer service, a slick UI and ready to scale to millions of unsers instantly. Without customers, you have nothing.

I think that is 1 step too far.

Why does a site have customers? Not because it has customers. But something else.

And I think that something else is usefulness. Look at any busineas or site that is successful. To someone, it is useful.

The one factor: meet a need.

If you're selling something, make it something that people want at the right price and make it easy for them to buy.

If you're selling advertising (you're a decade late on that one...), give people a reason to come back to the site - make the site sticky or have network effects.

Scaling comes later (assuming your initial design isn't a complete resource hog). It literally follows the money.

> The one factor: meet a need.

One answer that captures the essence of the issue and provides the correct answer is downvoted. Honestly I do not get HN members at all

what do you mean by 'network effects'?

Niche is one of the main one. Most people have limited time and limited memory and wont use more than a dozen sites every day. Even though I use to bookmark thousands of websites, when Im bored I dont find it easy to remember more than 5 sites that I'm interested in.

Like everything else, I look at nature for guidance. In this case the Epidemiologic Triad (https://onlinecourses.science.psu.edu/stat507/node/25).

My understanding (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) of it in the context of good websites is

Host: You need a great host/site, something stable & something people want to use

Agent: I consider agents as internal factors like technical, sales & marketing, They help you grow & the ensure stability.

Environment: Environment is pretty much your jurisdiction, you need to make sure that your solution is legal & your environment is supporting of you growing. Another fascinating theory to study around that is the Overton window (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window).

Vector: A vector, an organism which transmits infection by conveying the pathogen from one host to another, with the most powerful agent been word of mouth.

I guess if you have these 4 components structure well, then you have a pretty good chance of having a successful website according to the Epidemiologic Triad.

Now if you're question is more around business models, then heres also another good resource to look into by HBR (https://hbr.org/2016/10/the-transformative-business-model)

From what I've observed of my own behavior, the way to get me to consistently check back on a blog is to let me know the blog exists, be in my general category of interest, and then consistently update with impressively good content.

I first got hooked on slatestarcodex (http://slatestarcodex.com/) when the author hit a five post homerun streak and he was just too good to not check in with.

When I'm evaluating whether to follow a tumblr I can see the process unfold in real time, where I scroll down and finally think to follow after I see several really good posts at once. The moment I stopped and saw myself doing that I realized if I ever wanted to get followers on tumblr my blog would probably need to have the same kind of five-post punch to get people interested.

So.

1. Update often.

2. Make it easy to find your new stuff, or display your archive proudly and live off the interest.

3. Keep a high quality bar. It might even be useful to take your absolute best and put it in one place so you can show people your better side.

4. Market aggressively or be prepared to wait a while.

I would've thought that scaling was a fair way down the list. Don't scale prematurely is one mantra commonly mentioned.

It's also question that needs to be better defined. What sort of site? What definition of success?

For many sites, the biggest pieces are having something that people want or need, then consistently providing it. Of that pairing, having something people want is the absolute core.

Very generally speaking, fill people's needs.. Look at maslow's hierarchy of needs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs.

You'll get some ideas.

More to the point, making sure people know about it and the site is easy to use. Beautiful design is nice but if it gets in the way people will admire it once, twice... and finally give up. Don't let content get stale.

Content is king, don't worry about design or scalability. Just look at HN <grin>

I think you need to specify here what you mean by success. It sounds to me like you mean something like "made someone rich," which is a far cry from what I was thinking when I came here intending to try to articulate something only to realize it is almost certainly wholly unrelated to what you are talking about.

by successful I mean a useful site that its users (hopefully lots n lots of them) use on a regular basis. revenue is not the success deciding factor for me. its one way to look at it.. another way is something so useful that it eventually becomes synonymous with its domain. I hope you're getting where i'm going with this :)

Having a good mix of other factors.

The site owners not expecting there to be one deciding factor that would make it successful.

What is the one deciding factor that makes a business successful? Swap out website for business. Revenue. If your business makes money therefore it's successful. Swap out users if your website / business earns ad rev.

wouldn't you agree that craigslist was successful before even it made a buck ?

Kind of the YCombinator mantra: "make something people want". Talk to potential/existing users often and use that information to be laser focused on product building.

That's like asking what the one deciding factor for cancer is.

Make your site work in any browser, and make it accessible. The sheer volume of useful sites that break because of poor accessibility and design antipatterns is astonishing. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern

The audacity of webmasters who think all their users have JavaScript enabled is quite cruel and shows that this problem is endemic of lack of education about who your visitors are. Infact your visitors could be anybody and they could have any configuration.

The deciding factor that makes a website successful is offering info or tools that people look for and need.

It meets the needs of its users while fulfilling the objectives of its creators.

Does what it says.

Its all about marketing strategy.

Satisfying a need.

Accessibility.

Profit.

Speed.

its purpose

hyperlinks

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