Building a website isn't the end; it's just the beginning. Many business owners treat launching as a goal, treating their website like a business card. As a result, traffic stagnates, conversions falter, and costs spiral upward. Many independent websites fail within 90 days. This article, drawing on real-world examples, deciphers the underlying reasons and solutions for the death of independent websites. Get the answers!

Fatal Cause 1 — Thinking “Having a website means having traffic” (the most common illusion)

Many teams invest their money and energy in "making their website look beautiful," but fail to establish a consistent customer acquisition mechanism: SEO, content matrix, off-site marketing, social media, or email funnels. Building a website and waiting for traffic to come is a misconception—"building a website, but no traffic" is a common theme in the list of e-commerce and independent website failures. Industry analysts cite the "build a website, and traffic will come" mentality as a fatal mistake.

What you can do now: Define the traffic mix for the first 6 months (search + paid + social media + email), allocate budget/personnel by channel and set weekly KPIs.

Fatal Reason 2 — Spending Money Wrongly: Blindly Looking for “Yearly Website Building Package + Buying Keywords” Instead of Systematic Investment

The outsourcing/operation agency market is riddled with pitfalls: Many businesses spend large sums on packages that promise a "sleek website with guaranteed rankings," only to see minimal traffic months later. When they seek legal redress, they discover hefty termination fees. Real media reports of small businesses paying exorbitant prices for SEO/website development only to receive no actual inquiries remind us that supplier selection and contract design are crucial.

What you can do now: Write down the delivery milestones (inclusion, ranking, organic traffic, consultation volume) and SLAs in the contract; initially divide the budget into two parts: "testing (validation)" and "scaling".

Fatal Reason 3 — Weak Technical and SEO Foundations: Not Crawled/Not Indexed/Poor Mobile App/Slow Loading

No matter how beautiful a page is, if Google, Bing, or other search engines in the target market struggle to crawl it, or if the page loads extremely slowly and the mobile experience is poor, the traffic is wasted. SEO failures are often not due to content issues, but rather to a flawed foundation—site structure, robots, sitemaps, semantics, speed optimization, first-page rendering, and other issues often overlooked at launch. The result is "no traffic coming in, and even if it does, it doesn't stay." Authoritative analysis indicates that SEO often "failures before it even begins," often due to a mismatch between infrastructure and engineering.

What you can do now: Perform a full technical SEO audit (crawl, index, speed, mobile, structured data, core web vitals), prioritizing fixing the top five issues impacting indexing and conversions.

Fatal Reason 4 — Empty Content/No Long-term Content Production

An independent website isn't just a collection of advertising pages, but rather a vehicle for long-term content assets. Beyond product pages, you need industry content, articles focused on long-tail keywords, case studies, FAQs, external media, and backlinks. Ignoring content means forgoing the long-term compounding benefits of organic traffic. Many marketers make the mistake of trying to win with one-off advertising without the support of sustained content and brand building.

What you can do now: Create a 6-month content calendar (covering high-intent pages + long-tail topics + purchase-assisted articles), and link "content output" with "traffic/conversion" for assessment.

Fatal Reason 5 — No Data Tracking and Continuous Optimization (No Iteration After Building the Website)

Failure to implement accurate conversion tracking, event tracking, heatmaps, and funnel analysis after website launch is a suicidal strategy. Many failed projects share a common trait: a failure to analyze data, analyze ROI across channels, conduct A/B testing, or optimize processes after launch. E-commerce isn't about "launching once and cashing in"; it's a long-term, data-driven process of trial, error, and scaling. Industry reports cite a lack of continuous improvement as a key factor in e-commerce project failure.

What you can do immediately: Complete the construction of GA4/Server-Side, event tracking, first-day key funnels and key KPI dashboards within 72 hours, and ensure someone monitors and proposes improvement tasks every week.

Fatal Reason 6 — Product/supply chain/price not in line with the market

The premise for independent websites to "harvest traffic as their own domain" is that the product can be purchased repeatedly, build word-of-mouth reputation, and maintain margins that allow for sustained customer acquisition. However, many teams assume that simply putting factory products on an independent website will allow them to expand globally, neglecting market segmentation, pricing, profit margins, and logistics experience. As a result, even if traffic arrives, it fails to sustain conversions. In practice, inventory and cash flow issues can also bring down seemingly promising websites.

What you can do immediately: Do a 3-week product-price verification: small batch multi-SKU test to measure whether CAC (customer acquisition cost) and LTV (customer lifetime value) match.

Classic case reminder (don’t think that only others make stupid mistakes)

• Boo.com : A classic example of a "spending money on a fancy interface without a sustainable customer acquisition and operational model" failure. Broken funding, unclear strategy, and disjointed execution led to a complete project failure. This classic case serves as a reminder: Whether in B2C or B2B, blind expansion and neglect of business models can be fatal.

• Small and micro businesses are being scammed by high-priced “website building + SEO” services : local media have reported on real complaints from owners who paid high fees but received no traffic, reminding us that we must be vigilant in selecting suppliers and contract terms.

If you still want to save the station now: 90-day self-help plan

1. Day 0–3: Set up and calibrate data tracking (GA4, events, conversions, heatmaps).

2. Days 3–10: Do a technical SEO and speed audit to fix the three biggest issues impacting indexing/conversions (crawl, mobile, and home screen speed).

3. Days 7-30: First use small payments to test traffic (FB/IG/Google), and simultaneously create 10 long-tail/conversion articles that can bring in traffic.

4. Days 30–60: Evaluate channel CAC, retain channels with good ROI, stop wasting budget, and incorporate data-driven optimization (A/B) into daily routines.

5. Days 60–90: Review and decide whether to scale up (invest) or shut down (cut losses); if scaling up, increase the budget based on verifiable channels and build a team or systematically outsource.

If you don't want to navigate all the risks, contracts, technical details, content production, SEO optimization, and data management aspects of website building yourself, and are looking for a truly integrated solution that delivers "website building + technical SEO + content production + data-driven development," you can consider end-to-end service providers on the market. For example, AB Ke Intelligent Website Builder comprehensively integrates a comprehensive suite of capabilities, including intelligent website building, content factories, intelligent SEO, data analysis, maintenance, and promotion. By creating a systematic closed loop of "website building, content, SEO, and data," you can use one system as a team, minimizing both personnel and operational costs.

Finally, a harsh word (also a conscientious suggestion)

Don't treat launch as the end. Website building is just about setting up assets. The organizations that truly fail are those without a sustained strategy, a data-driven approach, long-term content, and a customer acquisition system. Those who treat website building as a project to be completed will be quickly outmaneuvered by teams that treat "website building + distribution + content + data" as a long-term battle.

Check Now (3-Minute Self-Test Checklist)

• Does the homepage load in under 3 seconds? (No → Speed is paramount)

• Are GA4/Conversion/Heatmaps all set up? (No → Set up points first)

• Was organic traffic 0 in the last 30 days? (Yes → Enable Content/SEO Calendar)

• Did you only run one creative/one audience for your paid campaign? (Yes → Test multiple creatives with a small budget)

• Does the supplier contract clearly state “milestones + indicators + termination clauses”? (No → Supplement the contract)

• Free experience of AB customer 0 yuan website building + SEO + smart marketing ~