| Free Adobe Photoshop website templates by Colorifer.com. Web design articles | |
|
|
|
|
10 Ways to Sabotage Your Website Traffic and Send Visitors Packing
If you're running a website or online business, your number one goal should be to build traffic. The following are ten ways to drive traffic away from your site. Make sure you aren't making these mistakes. 1. Links Open in the Same Window: If links to other sites don't open in a new window, then you are giving your traffic away. Don't expect site visitors to use the "Back" button or remember where they started. Once they're gone, they are most likely gone for good. 2. No Free Content: Sites that are pure sales pitches are missing the boat. You need to establish credibility with your site visitors and give them a reason to come back. Simply displaying the internet equivalent of an informercial gives your visitors little chance to get to know you-and many people will need to be exposed to your site a number of times before buying. Offer articles, links, statistics, and other useful information. 3. Poor Design: You don't have to be a professional web designer to have a quality site. You can purchase an inexpensive template to give your site a uniform and professional appearance. 4. Useless Newsletter: If you don't already have a newsletter, you should. This is an effective and inexpensive way to market your business. Your newsletter MUST provide information your subscribers want. The best newsletters give free tips and advice-and lots of it. You want your subscribers to enjoy receiving your content and to pass it on to a friend. Survey your readers and ask for feedback. Find out what they want and then figure out how to deliver. 5. Difficult to Subscribe: You should be asking your visitors to sign up for your newsletter or e-zine and make it easy for them to do so. Every single page in your site should provide the opportunity to subscribe. Archiving copies of your newsletter also allows visitors the chance to try before they buy. If your newsletter is good enough, subscribers will be in abundance. 6. Weak "About" Info: Too many websites either don't have an "About Us" page or have one with minimal information. Not only is this page a tool to establish credibility with your customers, it's a way the media can learn more about your business. 7. Lacking Contact Info: Similar to the "About Us" page, the "Contact Us" page needs to be as thorough as possible. If you don't include a mailing address or location information, site visitors may question your credibility. If you don't have a commercial location, you can rent a post office box. You may never even receive mail there, but at least you will be accessible. 8. Too Much Advertising: You want your site to sell, but you will drive potential customers away by advertising too heavily. Avoid becoming a banner farm and balance quality content with related advertising. 9. Using a Hit Counter: There is absolutely no reason to provide a hit counter on your site. Why advertise your site traffic to everyone when you can obtain the statistics through your hosting provider? 10. Broken Links: Not only do broken links hurt your website rankings when crawled by the search engines, but they frustrate visitors. If you provide a lot of links on your site it can be difficult to keep up with them. Make a point of testing your links on a regular basis and let your visitors help you by including an option on each page to "Report a Broken Link." If your site is guilty of any of the above offenses, then it's time to act. Evaluate the web sites you visit and notice which sites look very professional and which sites need help. Virtually anyone can run a successful website by being resourceful and avoiding these mistakes. Stephanie Chandler is the author of "The Business Startup Checklist and Planning Guide: Seize Your Entrepreneurial Dreams!" and the founder of http://www.BusinessInfoGuide.com, a directory of free resources for entrepreneurs. Subscribe to the newsletter to receive hot small business tips and resources by sending an email to newsletter@BusinessInfoGuide.com.
MORE RESOURCES:
Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Your Web Site Is A Wonderland: What Picassos Art Taught Me About Persuasive Design Whenever singer John Mayer sings his romantic song, "Your Body is a Wonderland", I can't help but think of web sites and usability. As a usability consultant, I see the devotion to his lover, and the time he spent uncovering every detail of her being, as the way most web site designers think we approach their web sites. Website Maintenance: What Does it Take to Manage Your Website? Every action has a beginning phase where you launch your activity, a middle period in which you must sustain and develop it and a conclusion. Many people set up a website enthusiastically but then they find that they don't have the skills or knowledge to maintain and develop it. How to Create a Great Landing Page for Your Website The landing page or entry page of your visitors is the most important page to your website. This page is likely to be your home page if you happen to be promoting your website url http://www. How To Use Unsafe Web Colors With Minimum And Safety And Maximum And Profit Do you want to use unsafe web colors without offending anyone? You can and you can do it by using JavaScript. It will determine which style tag the user uses by looking at whether it can use unsafe colors. Successful Websites Don't Set Out To Sell What are websites? Are they sales tools for vendors and service providers, or are they electronic guidance for potential customers? Put simply, are you selling or are you helping?Your answer to this question may determine the success of your website. So think carefully?How we define what a website is all depends on which side of the fence we're on. 15 Website Elements That Attract Visitors Here is a quick list of components that make a website attractive. They are listed in layers of attractiveness beginning with the "must" haves, to "nice to haves. Turn Harmful 404 Error Pages Into Helpful 301 Redirects It's a fact, Page Not Found, known as a 404 error, can harm your website Ranking with Search Engines as well as being a Turn-Off for Visitors.A search engine that repeatedly gets a 404 error will de-list the page from its index. Can a Webpage Created Without HTML? The HTML editor is usually a webpage design software that has a GUI(graphic user interface) which makes it easier to design a webpage using the File Menus. This is good for the non-programmers and non-technical people. The Testimonial Trick One of the most popular methods of traffic generation is the link exchange. Not only can they generate fairly targeted traffic from other related web sites, the number of quality links to your site is also a major factor determining your web site's ranking in major search engines like Google. KIS - Keep It Simple There are many ways to add fancy bells and whistles to your website, but most of them are not going to do you any good. In fact they will slow down the time it takes to load your website and take up valuable space that you are paying for. Make Your Site Quick To Load! The time it takes to load your site can make or break a visitor's first impression of your site. If your site takes too long to load, the visitor will click "Stop" or "Back" and leave your web site. How To Create A Homepage That Works Want to know what the worst thing to say on a homepage is?"Welcome to our homepage."And yet, time after time, we all come across such homepages on the Internet. 7 Web Site Design Mistakes That Will Lose You Clients In today's world, a web site is virtually mandatory for any successful business. But there are web sites that will win you customers, and there are web sites that will lose you customers. Increasing Conversions Through Action-Oriented Copywriting I do site reviews. Needless to say, I see a lot of Web copy. Top Ten Ways to Use Audio on Your Site Audio can provide an added dimension to your site. It creates a warm atmosphere where visitors feel like they know you. Long Copy Sales Letters on the Web: Hype or Not? I have written before about long sales copy on the web. But I have more to say on the subject. Tips On Effectively Organizing Your Navigation Not all links are created equal.While all of your links may be important, you must sort and prioritize to come up with an effective navigation scheme. How to Build Your Own Website - More Steps To build a website, there are four methods to choose from:First method: Get a professional designer to build the site for you:It is expensive in creation process, site maintenance and development.Second method: Designing the site with free website hosting:In this case, just sign in the website that offers this service, and start building your own website. Website Design: 10 Web Site Design Pitfalls To Avoid If you've a website that is not generating a lot of sales, it may be due to some design flaws.Below are website design flaws you should correct now, to empower your website:1. The Psychology of Color in Web Design Persons engaged in website design, here's a scoop for you! Would you just like to know that by understanding the basics of cognitive psychology around color and patterns, we could further improve our Web design!Designing a Web site does not only concentrate on making web pages of a certain site interesting and impressive. This skill and talent must also be used to ensure the user-friendliness of a certain site and must strive to reach the widest range of users possible.
|
|
2007-2008 © Copyright colorifer.com. All Rights Reserved. Free Adobe Photoshop templates. Web Design Articles | Site Map | Terms of Use 
|