A few years ago, we at Aplus.Net introduced to the web hosting world a new way to approach building an online business. Our Five Pillars of Online Success took all the dozens of factors that go into creating and maintaining a successful website and categorized them into one simple system.
In the excitement of all the big changes that our company has gone through over the past year, we haven't given the Five Pillars concept the attention it deserves. However, after revisiting the idea in a 2006 TopHosts article, we want to share it again with all of you.
From the article:
Pillar 1. Design and Develop an Effective, Professional Website
From content and image management to interaction and navigation tools, Aplus.Net can provide every service and tool needed to easily build an effective website. What’s more, they also have the ability to put clients' sites in the hands of experienced, in-house professionals seasoned in creating effective and attractive web pages. Many competitors choose to outsource this vital function, and risk harming themselves and their customers when that chain of communication breaks down. After all, one simple mistake in the layout or logic of a website and customers will be quick to move on to the competition.
Pillar 2. Driving Traffic, Getting Attention
The importance of driving traffic to your site cannot be overestimated, for obvious reasons: The more people you reach, the more your customer base grows. And the best way to drive traffic is through search engine optimization. If your website is to be truly successful, you must dominate the search engine results in your market—both the “real” results (natural results that depend on the relevancy of your site to the keywords being searched for) and the paid results (search engine placement that’s specifically paid for). To this end, Aplus.Net offers a stunning variety of eTraffic and search engine tools, from the simple to the Google-customized, and can offer advice on which will work best for any given website.
Pillar 3. Sell, Sell, Sell: Engage Customers with Effective Sales Tools
After ensuring that your site is easy to find, the next step is to make sure that nothing prevents a straightforward, satisfying, and informed purchase for your visitors. Aplus.Net can help build consumer confidence with “Customer Getters” (Live Chat, Push-to-Talk), “Customer Keepers” (online forms and mailing lists), and eCommerce Tools (such as shopping carts and links to well-known sellers like Amazon and eBay).
Pillar 4. Analyze and Improve: Keeping Your Site at the Top
Imagine being able to track the physical movements of your customers—what store they went to before yours, which one they’ll visit next, and which one earns their money. Traditional marketing formats like print media and TV can’t offer this kind of tracking power. The Internet, however, can. From visitor profile tools to Web Analytics, Aplus.Net offers plenty of alternatives for those businesses that can’t or won’t hire a $100k marketing director to analyze customer buying patterns.
Pillar 5. Protect Your Site: Ensuring Safety for Your Customers
With identity theft and online scams at a sharp increase, consumers are becoming more and more wary of the Internet as a safe place to do business. So, Aplus.Net's last and arguably most important category is dedicated to one simple, essential, and unavoidable fact: Visitors must feel safe and secure about your website, or they won't purchase through it. A quality hosting company will provide awareness of and access to the many certifying organizations (such as SSL) that exist to promote online security, as well as tools to protect business identity, protect against spam, make credit card transactions safe, and much more.
Please feel free to visit the "Five Pillars" section of our website whenever you need a refresher on these ideas. Thanks for reading!
