Before you set up your next site, take care to avoid these common website pitfalls in order to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to become customers.
1. Flash Landing
Once they’ve landed at your virtual doorstep, isn’t it a bit silly and redundant to ask your website visitors if they want to “enter”? Don’t give people a chance to change their minds and leave after you’ve worked so hard to get them there. There’s also the fact that Flash has fallen out of favor with some mobile device manufacturers (e.g. Apple). On top of that, text embedded in Flash images cannot be indexed by search engines, thereby reducing the SEO benefit of your Home page.
2. Busy Wallpaper
Keep the look of your site simple and clean. Ever notice how some of the biggest sites on the Web don’t even use a background color, let alone an image? Large image files and backgrounds take more time to load, so don’t delay or distract your visitors unnecessarily.
3. Auto-play Audio or Video
Sound or video that starts playing automatically can be an automatic turn-off, so if audio is a must for your site, be sure to give your visitors the option to easily turn it off. Remember that many of your visitors may be in an open office environment, and intrusive music can be an unwelcome surprise that causes them to flee for the exit.
4. Below-The-Fold Copy
Although the “fold” expression dates to newspapers, the idea is the same. Try to keep your copy and other important content visible “above the fold” so that visitors don’t need to scroll down (like turning to the bottom half of a newspaper page) to read the rest. Minimize the amount of clicking or scrolling your visitors have to do to find the information they want.
5. Tiny Type
Don’t bury your message in busy website visuals. To ensure your content can be easily read by visitors, use backgrounds that contrast well with your chosen type style. You should also avoid embedding text in images, which makes copy harder to read and prevents search engines from indexing your content. Keep your copy brief and use frequent paragraph breaks to give readers easily digestible blocks of information.
6. Outside Links
Be careful not to direct people away from your website too soon. If you link to outside source content, make sure the embedded link opens in a new window so that your visitors don’t inadvertently leave your site.
7. No Contact
This should be a no-brainer. There’s nothing worse than not being able to find a phone number or email address on a company’s website. Contact pages are a must, but you should also include at least your phone number (if not also your email and mailing addresses) on each page to make it easy for would-be customers to reach you.
