How to drive away customers with these website disasters

Most small business owners think they have a handle on their website design. They may even have a vaunted “graphic designer” who tells them this is how their site needs to look. Unfortunately, neither the small business owner, or the “graphic designer”, knows anything about marketing and how to effectively design a site so that it will convert traffic into sales.

There are glaring website design disasters perched at virtually every small business website and they must be attended to if you want to make those precious conversions. After all, that is the only reason your website exists.

•  One of the major website design disasters is that a site is too busy. There are graphics and text covering every last piece of white space. Crazy fonts that no one wants to read. The site is causing people to click back and leave because they will not take the time to wade through your design catastrophe. Keep it simple. Allow it to flow from one idea to another. You are leading them down the yellow brick road to the sale.
• Most website design has no search function for their potential customer. If they are actually on your site, they are there for something specific that you sell. Allow them to find it with a search bar. Also, don’t forget your contact information. Never mind this ridiculousness of an email template. People aren’t going to email you and they want to be reassured that you actually exist somewhere. Let them know where they are and encourage them to call and talk with a real person.
• Don’t play music, avoid pop ups, and keep your FAQ page short and to the point. They want to know about pricing, warranties, and shipping. Also, if your website design has a splash page asking potential customer to “click here to enter” your site, then you might as well forget anyone ever coming in. Simplicity is the key to your website design.
• Again, simplicity is vital. Keep your graphics to an absolute minimum and make it easy for your potential customer to navigate their way to a particular product or service. If you have links on your page check them weekly. Nothing looks worse than a dead link and there are tons of sites out there that have them. It’s just sloppy work.

Remember that simplicity is the key. Make your website design easy for your customer to buy from you. If you cannot do it yourself, and few can, hire some real professional web designers and content creators. It will be an investment in the future success of your company. Today, you cannot afford to have a amateurish website. No one wants to visit your site and discover that they have landed in 1994.