There are certain things that will instantly turn off web viewers. This article is to ensure you don’t make these huge website mistakes when designing your business website – mistakes that will have your potential customers instantly clicking the back button in their browsers. Make sure you avoid:
Auto Playing Anything:
A big pet peeve of mine when it comes to surfing the web is sites that auto play music or video as soon as you visit. If people want to hear music while browsing the web they will listen to THEIR music. If I visit a site that auto plays music or video I will be hitting my back button instantly. Video on websites can be a very useful selling tool. Make sure you give the user the option to play the video when/if they want.
Over Sized Home Page Images:
For some reason, many small business owners love the giant homepage image, in which the user has to click on the “enter” link. Obviously if I’ve come this far I want to enter your site, don’t give me the option to change my mind. Not only are these frustrating to users, they are horrible for SEO. Save yourself some future leads and don’t use they homepages.
Hyper-linking Off Your Site:
This is such a silly mistake I see over and over. If you are going to add links to other peoples sites (which is very common practice) make sure you “open the link in a new window.” There is no reason you should give people a link to leave your site and not come back.
Constant Pop-up Windows:
If you keep bombarding your user with pop-up windows they will leave. A pop-up window can be a very effective call-to-action but it needs to be used in the appropriate context. If your visitor has been on your page for a reasonable amount of time (say 30 seconds) and you want to put a “contact us” pop up window that would be acceptable. Just make sure they can easily see the “close” button. If you send a pop-up window as soon as a new visitor clicks on your site, they will find that annoying and most likely leave. Likewise if you keep using pop-up windows every time they click on a new page, they will get fed up and find another site.
Flash:
I hate it so much – people do not want to wait for your Flash website to load. They are looking for information – they do not care about your cool effects.
John Shaw
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