Bright Ideas # 78 - 14 Business-Killing Website Mistakes

I don’t know what it is…

Maybe it’s that I’ve been speaking on the subject lately…

Or maybe it’s just that small business owners are finally figuring out they really do need a Website, but not just any old site will do…

Whatever the reason, I’ve been doing quite a lot of Website critiques lately. And you know what has become all too clear???

Most people, regardless of what business they are in, are making the exact same Websites mistakes.

And you know what happens when your Website isn’t up to par, right?

Your site doesn’t get any traffic. Or if it does, you don’t get very many leads or sales.

Just take a gander at these scary statistics from Gartner Group:

• 85% of visitors abandon a new site due to poor design
• 50% of Web sales are lost because visitors can't easily find content
• 50% of visitors leave when a site takes more than 15 seconds to load
• 40% of repeat visits are lost because of a negative experience

The bottom line is, people can (and will) click away from your site in a heartbeat. So if you want your Website to work for you, it has to meet the needs and expectations of your visitors.

How do you do that? Start by reading the list below and fixing these common Website mistakes.

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14 Business-Killing Website Mistakes
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1. Making ‘Em Guess
You have four seconds to get a visitors attention and let them know you have what they are looking for. That means you need to state what you offer up front—ideally in big, bold letters.

Solution: Put a headline and written content in the “above the fold” area of your site (the part you can see when you first open your browser window) that summarizes what they can find on your site.

2. Snoozer Content
Advertising great David Ogilvy once said “You can never bore someone into doing business with you.”

Everyone knows people don’t buy from businesses; they buy from people they like. So if you want prospective customers to read what you have to say make it interesting, informative, and friendly.

Solution: Your content should sound like you are having a conversation with one other person (IE: your reader). So write like you speak and don’t be afraid to have fun and be, well, human. The Web is impersonal enough as it is.

3. We, Me, My, Us & Our
I know this might come as a shock, but your site visitors don’t want to know all about you, what you do, and how you do it. They want to know what you can do for them!

So starting with phrases like “Acme Group is the leading manufacturer of…” is no way to entice people to keep reading. Why? Because it’s all about you instead of them. Try this simple test: Do the majority of your sentences and paragraphs start with I, We, Our, or your company name? If so, it’s time for a rewrite.

Solution: Rework your sentences to start with “you” and “your” and focus on the benefits to the customer.

4. Letting People Wander Aimlessly Away
If you don’t tell people what to do next, there’s no telling what they are going to do. But chances are good it’ll involve clicking away from your site.

Solution: If you want them to call, tell them so and give ‘em the phone number right there. If you want them to go to a specific page, sign up for a newsletter, or download a report, tell them to do so. Then make it super easy with a handy link or obvious sign-up box.

5. Enormous Blocks of Tiny Text
Most people don’t read on the Web—at least not initially. They skim and scan to see if you have what they are looking for. And there are few things more daunting and difficult for a scanner than large blocks of text.

Solution: Do your best to keep paragraphs less than five lines long. And use bullets or lists whenever possible.

6. You’ve Lost Your Head (line, that is)
Again, when people first get to your site, they’ll skim until they are sure you have what they want. If all you have are images, large blocks of text, or worse, hardly any text at all, you make that very difficult.

Solution: Make it easy as pie for them to know they are in the right place with big, bold headlines and smaller, juicy subheads. Just FYI, “Welcome to our site” is NOT a good headline.

7. Fancy Flash Intros and Stylish Landing Pages
Web designers love to build these, but most Web users hate them. After all, who has time to wait for those things to load, or the text to slowly scroll across???

Think you might be guilty of this one, but you’re not sure? Use this handy rule of thumb: If you can’t navigate back to the opening page from the rest of the site, or the opening page has a “skip intro” option, the page clearly isn’t important.

Solution: Get rid of it. And don’t ever let a designer talk you into building one. It’s a waste of your visitor’s time and your money.

I know I promised you 14 mistakes, but I’ve run out of room for today. So I’ll pick up with number eight next week…

©2002-2006 Success Stream. All Rights Reserved. www.success-stream.com

Do you have a marketing, advertising or writing question you’d like to have answered? Email me and you might see the answer in a future edition of Bright Ideas.

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