IWS Best Practice Articles | Web Site Planning

10 WEBSITE BLUNDERS GUARANTEED TO SEND YOUR VISITORS ELSEWHERE

When you build your website you need to have a plan first. The reason for this is if you do not have a plan you will likely make mistakes, forget to include information, and overall have an unorganized and not a well thought out page. While you might read the page and completely understand everything, remember that your website visitor did not design the page and needs a little more direction. Read the following 10 website blunders that are common and will make your visitors head to another site quickly.

Blunder #1 Contact Information You need to provide your contact information, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and physical address if important. The reason for this is if a potential customer wants to contact you for whatever reason they can! Blunder #2 Poor Organization Make sure your website is well organized and that all links are obvious. You should even use subheadings to make it even more clear where information is. You don’t want to have to make people search. Blunder #3 Checkout Make the checkout process straightforward and easy. Too many times people get to the checkout and it is difficult, asks for a lot of unnecessary information, and generally takes longer than the customer wants to spend buying the product. As a result, the potential customer leaves your site to buy elsewhere. Don’t let this happen to you, make your checkout fast and easy! Blunder #4 Typos If your website has typographical errors, it will be noticed by your visitors. Many people consider this a sign of a novice, not a professional who is in business trying to make a living. If your website is full of typos, people are not going to believe that you take your site seriously and as a result they won’t either. Blunder #5 Hidden Information Do not hide information. You as a webmaster might not think the information is hidden, but if it is not readily visible it might as well be hidden. Make all information obvious and easy to find. Blunder #6 Personal Information Do not ask for personal information, and if you do explain why and do not make it mandatory. Many times people will want to buy your product and get to the checkout page only to have to answer lots of personal questions first. This will send people to other less interrogative pages. Blunder #7 Too Many Forms Keep it simple. If you are asking for memberships, checkouts, or anything that requires information, do not use a lot of forms. Figure out what questions you really need to ask and keep it short and sweet. Blunder #8 You, not We Focus on your customers, their needs, and what you can do for them. Your customer is not going to your page to find out about you, but what you can do for them. Remember this and if you have to put a web history about yourself, then do so in a special section where people can opt to read it. Blunder #9 Help People Make a Decision People might not know what they want when they go to your website. So, lead them, make suggestions about products, and provide backgrounds and uses for different products. Blunder #10 Focus Make sure the focus of your site is obvious and clear from the first page of your site and throughout.

About The Author
Michael Turner reveals his foolproof way to increase website traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it free right now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/.