Posted by Tom Krengel
on 06/11/09
What is the secret to online success? Great design, intuitive navigation from page to page, easy to read page content, valuable information? Yes - Yes - Yes - Yes and more. The factors responsible for the majority of websites that fail can be traced back to a handful of very avoidable missteps.
1. BAD PLANNING
Effective, thoughtful, and thorough planning and goal-setting for any website is crucial to its achieving success. A lot online initiatives come up short or even fail due to lack of or poor planning. Planning can be further defined by its components: goal setting, team assembly, roles definitions, strategizing, design, architecture, navigation scheme creation, page layouts, visitor interactivity, and finally - effective execution. If all of those elements are not present or do not work in harmony, your website project is fundamentally challenged from the start.
2. FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND THE MEDIUM
Today's winning websites feature content that is designed for the web. Let me emphasize that - the page content has been produced especially to be viewed on a computer monitor or even smart phone. What does that mean? Simply that good sites are not merely doing a copy+paste from a corporate marketing print brochure. No, their 'web' page content has been written for on-screen viewing/reading which in effect means "less is more". And photos of course are optimized for online viewing which means nothing need be higher than 72dpi and you should restrict file size to under 100kb.
3. FAILURE TO GIVE VISITORS ADDED VALUE
Online surfers are busy, have a lot of sites to choose from, and will quickly leave your site if you fail to deliver value. Although the primary goal of your business’ website is to market your product or service, your competitors are probably singing the same song and doing the same dance. So to differentiate themselves from competition, successful site owners are seen offering free tools, downloads, expert advice via chat, etc. that is highly valued by visitors and still very much tied to your business. By doing this, you establish yourself as an expert, and you will create credibility with your visitors as you generously offer them your expertise.
4. BAD CHOICE OF IMAGES, PLUGINS, ETC.
Is that flippy, bouncy, flash intro really necessary? Does it improve your visitor's experience or accentuate your message or help define a process? No? Then cut it. Today's visitors are savvy. They've probably seen those same stock images in dozens of places from newspaper ads to direct mail pieces, so when those same faces appear on your site they know the people portrayed are [1] not your satisfied customers, and [2] not your staff members. So if you opt to use stock photography can you really blame people who conclude that your business methods might be equally suspect? Be proud of your location and your staff; go ahead and post their real pictures on your site. If you have trouble taking pictures, hire a professional photographer for half a day. The cost is neglible and you'll both fire up your employees and impress your site visitors.
5. NO CALL TO ACTION
Subscribe to our Newsletter. Contact us now. Sign up for a free tote bag. Your best contact list building leads are the ones that visit your website and leave their contact information in one of many places you've created for them there. If you are not capturing these visitors’ contact information so that you keep in touch with them, then you are simply ignoring a huge business potential.
Have you seen websites that "turn off" or discourage visitors due to poor design or difficult to decipher content? Tell us about it.
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