
Ask HN: What is that one deciding factor that makes a website successful? - ziggystardust
I have known a lot of people who have ventured into the &#x27;website&#x27; business and found the initial success and disappeared after a while.<p>I&#x27;m curious about what makes the successful ones successful . 
I&#x27;ve seen beautifully designed, high quality content sites fail.<p>so I&#x27;ve come to the conclusion that the key factor is scaling. even if you&#x27;ve programmed your site to scale, unless you pour in the dough to scale your servers and allow more people to come in you&#x27;re gonna fail. 
Is this the deciding factor? 
what according to you is that one deciding factor?
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afarrell
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/](http://lawcomic.net/)
successful? It has a loyal following, but it doesn't update that much, or earn
much money for its creator.

~~~
grecy
> _" 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.

~~~
brianwawok
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.

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emilyfm
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.

~~~
Lordarminius
> 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

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id122015
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.

------
armini
Like everything else, I look at nature for guidance. In this case the
Epidemiologic Triad
([https://onlinecourses.science.psu.edu/stat507/node/25](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](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](https://hbr.org/2016/10/the-transformative-
business-model))

------
unimpressive
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/](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.

------
prawn
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.

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

------
z3t4
Content is king, don't worry about design or scalability. Just look at HN
<grin>

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Mz
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.

~~~
ziggystardust
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 :)

------
lgas
Having a good mix of other factors.

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

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adamqureshi
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.

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

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hasanzuav
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.

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

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zerognowl
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](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.

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

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

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erikpukinskis
Does what it says.

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atultherajput
Its all about marketing strategy.

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estefan
Satisfying a need.

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gjolund
Accessibility.

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Gustomaximus
Profit.

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gcatalfamo
Speed.

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ttam
its purpose

------
probinso
hyperlinks

