Are you interested in building an engaging website that attracts traffic, leads, and sales?

It can feel overwhelming and confusing when you first get started. How can you know what works or doesn’t work in your niche or industry? What happens if you spend a fortune on a website and it doesn’t perform well?

There is no magic-bullet however there are techniques that will improve your likelihood of success. As a small business, the best way to find success is using a method called Website Reverse Engineering.

In this article, you’ll learn everything you need to know about modelling on the success of websites that are already performing well.

What is Reverse Engineering?

Before you get started on your website, it’s a good idea to make sure you have a firm grasp of what reverse engineering is all about and how it might apply to the online world.

Simply put, reverse engineering is the process of taking something apart to understand why and how it works. For example, if you dismantled a machine to understand how it functions, with the intention to learn and build your own machine, that’s reverse engineering at its best.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Looking at what already works and then modelling on the success of others is one of the most effective ways to win in life and business.

Website Reverse Engineering is the process of analysing other successful websites, gaining an understanding of why those sites might be performing well and figuring out how those strategies might work for your own needs.

Examples of Reverse Engineering

  • Eddie Van Halen modelled Les Paul by taking apart Les Paul’s guitars and building his own versions.
  • Tony Robbins modelled the work of personal development gurus that came before him and created his own methods from those prior teachings.
  • Facebook modelled previous social media platforms like MySpace and built a better model from the lessons learned.

Your job is to analyse other websites that already perform well and take note about what you see that is likely to be causing success. You will need to use your discretion to make a judgment call on what might work in your situation.

Use your creativity, style, goals, and strategies to put your unique spin on things. From there, you’ll be starting from a strong foundation and over time, discover better ways to enhance your website. You can become your industry’s version of Facebook, Tony Robbins, or Eddie Van Halen.

You’re Modelling, Not Copying or Stealing

It’s important to understand that Website Reverse Engineering ins not about plagiarism or any other illegal activity. At no stage should you ever directly copy another website.

This isn’t about copying a website or stealing someone else’s work. It’s about understanding overall concepts. It’s about understanding why a website is performing well and how those principles might apply to your business.

If you study a number of websites, you may pick-up on common techniques and trends that might be suitable for your business, and others that you should avoid.

For example, if a website in your industry or niche is performing well in search engines, you may be able to discover likely reasons why, and then follow similar strategies where suitable for your business.

Benefits of Using Website Reverse Engineering

Using reverse engineering to discover ideas for building an effective website helps bring the following benefits:

  • Gain understanding about existing strategies that work
  • Discover outdated methods that no longer serve you
  • Find out where vulnerabilities exist in your current website
  • Benchmark so you can create something superior
  • Create your individual and unique strategies for your brand

Find and Analyse the Best

You can’t analyse and reverse engineer that which you don’t know exists. Create a list of all your top competitors that already have high-performing websites. You will intuitively know who some of the leaders are in your industry and you might be surprised who else might be performing well online.

You can start with a simple Google search. Search for keywords that your ideal customers would likely use to find a business like yours. Compile a list of the top performing websites to review.

You should also consider websites that serve a similar target market to you and also brands that share some of the same qualities you want to be know for. A blending of all these ideas can be a great way to get the creative juices flowing.

You can use free tools like Ubersuggest to learn about these high-performing websites. It’s worthwhile considering the following: 

  • Monthly traffic numbers
  • Keywords use to find these websites 
  • Top performing page content
  • On page and off page SEO

By analysing a number of websites you’ll probably notice similar patterns that all the best websites follow. Don’t ignore these patterns, it’s likely to be the most important clues to discover what’s working well online. 

Put on your detective’s hat. Ask yourself what makes each page a successful website asset. Consider the following:

  • Website Structure
  • Website Design
  • Copywriting
  • Headlines
  • Call-to-action
  • Video content
  • Images

Review all these components to a website based on what you can see with your own eyes. Google’s goal is to rank websites that perform best for humans and they are getting more and more sophisticated in achieving that goal. Think like a human and you can’t go to far wrong.

Time to Get Started!

Website Reverse Engineering is a tried and true strategy to achieve online business dominance. Now it’s your turn. Start using this reverse engineering method to get started with the research. Your entrepreneurial success awaits you!

It’s time to put your thinking cap on. Get creative and add your unique ideas into the mix.

Ask yourself how you can use your copywriting and marketing skills to improve and innovate. Consider who you might bring into your team to make it all happen

Pro Tip: Choose Uplift 360 for web design and development.