Special Report:
Web Design and Marketing Mistakes
and How to Avoid Them
Does
your Web site make any of these mistakes? Any of these mistakes
will reduce your Web sales.
Web
Marketing Mistakes
- Lack
of valuable content. Without valuable content, there is no
reason for visitors and buyers to return to your Web site.
- Missing
or hard-to-find contact information.
- Trying
to be everything to everyone instead of having a unique selling
advantage.
- Not providing
an online order form. Make it easy to buy from you by providing
several ordering options, including a secure online order
form, an 800 number, and a fax number.
- Not accepting
credit cards. Offer several payment methods, including major
credit cards. The majority of sales will come from online
orders paid with credit cards. If you are not accepting credit
cards online via a secured server, you will lose sales.
- Lack
of keywords in your Web content, page titles, and description.
This will result in poor search-engines positioning.
- Me-oriented
content/copy vs. content that benefits the audience.
- Content
to satisfy the ego of the company CEO, developer, designer,
or programmer vs. customer-focused copy.
- Starting
a page with "Welcome to my Home Page" instead of providing
a benefit-oriented headline. For example, "Eight Ways to Boost
Credibility and Online Sales."
- Faulty
links.
- Slow-loading
pages. Prospective buyers won't wait for your pages to load.
- Typos.
You'll loose credibility.
- Splash
or entry pages (home pages with animation) visitors have to
click on to enter your site instead of indicating what your
site is about.
- Frames
can be hard to navigate. They are not supported by older browsers,
are difficult to bookmark, print, and are difficult to index
for search engines.
Web
Design Mistakes
- Missing
images.
- Underlined
words/sentences that can be confused with links.
- Curly
quotes, curly apostrophes, and other special characters that
are likely to be converted to some characters on some operating
systems.
- Pages
that are wider than your visitors' computer monitors forcing
visitors to scroll left to right.
- Background
music on your home page. Visitors will be tired of hearing
your music the third time they return to your home page in
one session. Have a "Stop Music" button. If you are a musician
and have music on your site, make listening to the music optional.
- Annoying
pop-up windows (a message window that obscures the main page)
that keeps coming up each time visitors return to the home
page.
- Flashing
banners, animation, flashing scrolls, and features that can
annoy visitors.
- Irritating
and distracting messages in the browser status line.
- Blinking
text that won't show in most browsers.
- Under
construction pages. Put your pages up when they are ready.
- Blue
background. Blue links, the stardard link color won't be visible
on a blue background.
How
user friendly is your Web site? Think like a prospective buyer
visiting your Web site for the first time. Your Web site will
be successful only if you provide what your customers needs.
Give
a positive impression with your Web site. Ask for feedback from
a professional Web designer, customers, and business associates.
Correct the problems. It will pay off.
Headers
Resources
Create your
own professional-quality headers
in just minutes with header
templates. Click here for
more info.
Header
Generator, a new software is another solution to create good-looking header
graphics for your web site without graphic design experience. Click
here for more info.
Another option
is to hire a professional designer to create your headers. Click
here to get more information about a designer I recommend.
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