Building Traffic For Your Website
Brian Provost wrote a great article outlining 8 simple steps for building traffic for your Internet startup. Here is his list…
1. Defensible traffic
2. Buy good domain names
3. Hire competent Internet people
3 a. Hold off on hiring MBA’s
4. Understand the cost of traffic
5. Build links
6. Engage your community
7. Engage social media
8. Push, pull, prod, and poke marketing
I’d like to add another one.
9. Usability - Nothing will keep a visitor from returning to your site more than poor usability. If they can’t figure out the value prop or how to use the site then you’ve just lost that person that you worked so hard to attract. And chance are they won’t ever return. It also helps if you have something of value in the first place.
Cameron Olthuis is the Founder of
I wholeheartedly agree. I ran out of caffeine after 8.
It’s cool, I ran out after 1.
A great read! Thanks. I also agree that UI/UE has to rock for folks. If something isn’t working correctly on the UI/UE front, make sure that feedback gets up the chain & that your company makes a product easy to use by internet novices as well.
Thanks for the link to this article. Very helpful. I also agree with the additional point about usability. I’ll sometimes come across a site that is “recommended” as a great resource but find that the design/navigation of the site is so terrible that it isn’t worth my time. I’d rather keep looking for another site that is less painful to use!