An effective website is essentially about the convergence of two things: your business goals and the needs of your target market.
Build something that aligns the two and you’ll end up with an effective website. Broken down like that it sounds simple, but achieving that convergence can be a tricky process – and a quick surf around the web will soon demonstrate that it’s easier to get it wrong than to get it right.
You’ll note we used the word ‘effective’ rather than ‘successful’. For a website to be successful people need to be able to find it, but if you build your site to cater for the right people’s needs you significantly increase the chance that, once they arrive, they’ll become more than just a passing statistic.