Does your website grab your visitors and keep them around wanting more? Or does it send them running the other way vowing never to return again?
Here are the top 10 most common mistakes that I see in bad web design.
1. Audio loading automatically in your web page
In my opinion, this is one of the most irritating things that send me running the other way every time. Never assume that your visitors are going to want to hear your music, advertisement, or your speech when they arrive.
Set any audio options so that it doesn’t start automatically. Just give the visitor the option to turn it on if they wish to hear it.
2. Poor background & text colors
Dark background colors combined with dark text, or light backgrounds with light text are very difficult to read. If I have to struggle to see what you have to say, I’m outta here.
3. Flash intros & graphics
Using flash in your website is just a bad idea if you’re an online marketer. Not only can they chase away some of your slow dial-up visitors, but they do absolutely nothing for your SEO. Flash is invisible to a search engine spider, so if your home page consists of a flash intro, Google sees no content on your page at all.
Use fast loading web optimized graphics instead. This way you can take advantage of the “alt” tags in your HTML code and insert your important keywords for your images. This will help your rankings in the SERPS.
4. Excessive pop-ups and flash fly-ins
If you want a guaranteed way to send your visitors packin’ & pissed off, try loading your web page with a bunch of pop-up windows. While you’re at it, throw in one of those flash or java adverts that follow you around every where you go, as well.
Pop ups are pretty much blocked by every browser anyway. A better alternative would be to use a javascript pop-up to capture emails in return for some type of value to your visitor, or an exit pop-up of some type.
5. Dead links
Dead links on a web page tells me that you don’t maintain your site and that your products are probably old & outdated as well.
The other thing that irritates me is clicking on links in the navigation menu and landing on “under construction” place holders. If you haven’t created a page yet, either don’t create a link for it, or at least add a “coming soon” label to the link text.
6. Adsense
If you have a sales page or a product review page, Adsense is about the worst thing that you can do for your conversions, not to mention your search engine rankings. According to James Brausch, Adsense actually lowers your rankings. This is most likely because there are so many junk “made for adsense” sites out there that the googlebot will likely lump you right in with this ilk.
Unless you’re getting 100,000 visitors a month, I would avoid it. It’s not worth the 2 bucks a month payout. In areas where adverts won’t kill your sales, try Advaliant as an alternative to Google. This can make you real money, not just pennies & nickels.
7. Huge paragraphs & run on sentences.
Web surfers generally are scanners. They want to skim through a web page quickly to see if it’s interesting or has what they’re looking for.
Having excessively long paragraphs may work in a novel, but not online. Keep your paragraphs limited to 1-3 sentences. Even though your former English teacher may give you a rash about it, this is what works. This is especially important for your sales or affiliate product review pages as well.
8. Busy web pages
Don’t fill your web pages with too many graphics, columns and adverts. Some web pages are so crowded with pictures mixed with text and poorly spaced columns. Thus causing the paragraphs to almost collide with the adjoining paragraphs and making for an unpleasant & difficult read.
Keep your web pages clean & easy on the eyes.
9. Poor Navigation
Make your website easy to get around in. Don’t make your visitors have to click on excessive links to get somewhere. Having to guess where to find something is no fun either.
You should design your website as if you were expecting dear old grandma to visit your site, who’s never used a web browser before.
10. Welcome to the 90’s
Do you have cheezy animated graphics created in 16 colors scattered all throughout your web pages? Or the java-script snow falling in the background along with the midi-music playing as well?
Back button, take me away!!! Come on man, get into the 21st century.
So… there’s my top ten. Did any of the above look familiar to your own web site? If so, it could be costing you in lost visitors which equal lost revenue.
Sometimes it just takes a simple change to make a huge difference.
Jack
Thank you very much for the Advaliant review
Peter Bordes
MediaTrust
CEO
Thanks for stopping by peter!
Advaliant has always been top notch in my book. 🙂
It surprises me that adsense actually lowers your score. The argument that you give does not make sense to me. There are many quality sites that do use adsense, so this should not matter. Anyway, I never saw any adverse effects from using it.
Olivier.
Oliviers last blog post – The 7 laws of attraction: The law of paradoxical intent.
good advices
thanks for this list, i agree with every one of them. i hate annoying websites.
If your website is using cpanel, just take a copy of a regular static page and alter it in your html editor to say something like
“huh – we don’t have that page” or something and paste the code into “custom error pages” in your cpanel
(not found is 404 btw)
seeing your familiar navigation is much more likely to keep the visitor in the site
sharp-end-trainings last blog post – When was the last time you took stock?
I just linked to your post in my International Marketer Review Blog Carnival at http://cindyking.biz/international-marketer-review-blog-carnival-15/ and I stumbled this post.
Stop by and vote for the best post of the week.
Cindy Kings last blog post – International Marketer Review Blog Carnival #15
so true, so true. and i do find it terribly irritating when audio plays when i load a website. absolutely hate it. and it slows the load time as well. usually, i just leave.
koujis last blog post – haiku poem: streets
I’m interested to see what James saw that made him conclude that AdSense lowers rankings. I’ve never seen that.
And don’t be so quick to dismiss the earnings power of AdSense. Yes, it can do serious damage to conversion rates, but on the right pages on the right topics it can be a huge earner — even for sites with way fewer than 100,000 visitors/month.
Great post with some good helpful tips. Used to hate that snow falling background – looks so tacky. I would be put off too if i went to a site with that
Nicks last blog post – Whiplash Compensation Claims
I completely agree with your first one. I absolutely hate voice software on the page right when you load. It is horrible.
Poor navigation and bad background colors are the problems I see the most. Why are people going to want to stay on your page if its impossible to read or find what you are looking for. Making your page as user-friendly as possible is the best route to keeping people coming back to your page.
Flash intro’s are not only annoying and make your site tougher to navigate, but then can also kill your ranking in the search engines.
These are all definitely reasons why someone would leave a site, but the root cause often doesn’t lay with the designer or their design choices, but rather the focus that has been outlined (or failed to be outlined) by the marketer. Each page needs to answer one simple question – what action do we want the user to take?
I agree with most points on your list, but like others have an issue that Adsense lowers your search engine rankings. Personally, I have never found that to be the case. It can definitely wreck your conversions, though.
autoloading audio….the worst of the nineties website design.
Laughing Moons last blog post – Turning Darkness into Light
Do you have any information on the secret movie? I’m interested on that subject.