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5 signs your Web site is doing more harm than good

Written by: Lori Gama

Article Overview: Take note of these five signs that your Web site may be doing more harm than good for your company's image (and yours)...

5 signs your Web site is doing more harm than good

Your company image is being judged each time someone visits your home page. Potential customers and possible job applicants figure out (within three seconds!) how smart you are by the way your Web site operates and looks. Don't let that impression be bad. You probably run your company very efficiently and have outstanding customer service but your Web site doesn't give a clue about that. Your Web site is simply bad. But how do you know if it's bad if you don't know what's great?


Take note of these five signs that your Web site may be doing more harm than good for your company's image (and yours):

Number one:
It looks like your nephew created it. It's become a cliche---somebody's nephew making your Web site. What that means is that your Web site looks and operates like an amateur put it together. C'mon: would you let your nephew design and build your retail store or restaurant or spa or office if he's not already an architect/designer/builder? Would you actually let your nephew (or your sister or yourself) create the impression your Web site makes on all those people who check you out online before they contact you? Unless you're a professional Web designer and programmer, don't waste your time and money trying to create this yourself.

Number two:
Your homepage has 27 choices to click on and, as a visitor to your site, I suddenly feel overwhelmed. Which door do I walk through first? The “door” is probably right there on the page but there are so many that I can't see it. I only want to get the information I need and move on to other things in my life. If this were a store, instead of a Web site, would you layout the eggs and milk and cheese in separate aisles or would you place them all in the same aisle? When you have a group of three related pages, see if you can cut down the text and combine them into one page with three subheadings. Make it easy for your Web site visitor to do what you want them to do and that is usually to buy something and/or contact you.

Number three:
The graphics look like clip art. One of the ingredients that make up a great Web site is fabulous design: just the right color combination that works well on your senses; just the right layout that's complimentary to the page elements and text; and, of course, great graphics that could either be made from cool typography or professionally shot photos or even motion graphics. Dress to impress.

Number four: Your Web site is talking about you like you're dead. “Mr. Head-of-the-company has been providing such and such service for nine years.” The “third-person” grammar is fine for a eulogy but when you've only got three seconds to grab the attention of your Web audience, you've got to know how to talk to them and how to get them to do what you want them to do. Web-oriented copy, speaking informally, like you'd talk to a friend is the best “voice” to have people read. As a potential customer, I want to feel like you, the owner, are personally having a conversation with me.

Number five:
Your Web site operates like a game of “Clue.” There's no clear path to the information I want. Instead, I'm given cryptic links to try. Remember that your Web site visitors (your potential customers) don't have a whole lot of time on their hands these days. We want to feel like you know exactly why we each came here to your Web site. Nobody wants to jump through a bunch of hoops to get to your value proposition.

Avoid the five signs of bad Web site-ism and you'll be much more likely to impress your visitors to the point of converting them into customers. Now THAT'S a great Web site.

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Article Tags: aisle, aisles, architect designer, choices, cliche, clue, company image, eggs, five signs, job applicants, milk and cheese, nephew, outstanding customer service, professional web designer, programmer, retail store, spa, time and money



Related Forum Posts
Re: How should i promote a new website? - [quote="Alan Mater":391s63q7] Submitting a website to the search engines is not the way to go about things. What you should do is get a link pointing to your site from another site. The search engines will naturally find your site and crawl it. This can be done by adding your site to link directories, blog commenting, rss submissions, article marketing, social bookmarking, etc. There's many ways to go about it, but that's all that needs done. Submitting a site to search engines will actually do more harm than good. Anelly, you've been given some great advice on how to promote your site. Article marketing, blog commenting, social bookmarking, forum posting, etc. are all great ways. Starting a blog and writing about your site and the product you're promoting is great as well. There's many offline strategies that work well, too.[/quote:391s63q7] Hi Alan, I completely agree with you. However, I don't remember where I saw this advice, but this guy recommended submitting to search engines ONLY ONCE, when your website is new and fresh, and never again! Didn't have time to try this, and I don't think is can do any harm, but only if you do it once. Backlinks are the only way to go.
Re: Just Saying Hello - Hi Camil, It's great to have you here! You're very lucky to have someone like David to take you under his wing and mentor you. There is a lot that one can learn from him, including myself. To answer your question about Pay Per Action, PPA simply means paying only after someone signs up for a newsletter, buys something, clicks a link on your site, etc. You don't pay simply for them clicking on the ad and going to your site, they have to take some sort of [i:3d00o8mo]action[/i:3d00o8mo] on your site. This would be a good alternative compared to PPC, and as Tanny mentioned, MSN's Ad Center would be a good PPC alternative. Yahoo Marketing would also be cheaper. Great questions so far... keep them coming! There are plenty of members here willing to help. All The Best, Alan
Re: How should i promote a new website? - [quote="TannyL":2u4k1le6][quote="Alan Mater":2u4k1le6] Submitting a website to the search engines is not the way to go about things. What you should do is get a link pointing to your site from another site. The search engines will naturally find your site and crawl it. This can be done by adding your site to link directories, blog commenting, rss submissions, article marketing, social bookmarking, etc. There's many ways to go about it, but that's all that needs done. Submitting a site to search engines will actually do more harm than good. Anelly, you've been given some great advice on how to promote your site. Article marketing, blog commenting, social bookmarking, forum posting, etc. are all great ways. Starting a blog and writing about your site and the product you're promoting is great as well. There's many offline strategies that work well, too.[/quote:2u4k1le6] Hi Alan, I completely agree with you. However, I don't remember where I saw this advice, but this guy recommended submitting to search engines ONLY ONCE, when your website is new and fresh, and never again! Didn't have time to try this, and I don't think is can do any harm, but only if you do it once. Backlinks are the only way to go.[/quote:2u4k1le6] Hmm... I've never heard that one. When I started my new niche site I never once submitted my site to any search engines. Now I'm getting over 200 visits a day from Google and other search engines, and it has a PR 2. If you get a chance to ask Suzanne Morrison I'm pretty sure she'll agree that submitting your site to search engines is a waste of time. It's better for them to find your site naturally through links on other pages. I totally agree that backlinks are the core for getting traffic and high search engine placements. Make sure to use the keywords in those backlinks that you want to rank for.
Re: How do we stimulate more forum activity and interest? - Hi GT, It's a good question. My immediate thought was that it would be worth thinking about how the good old ConquerYourNiche forum used to work to encourage people to get involved. I thought CYN was a very good forum and worked well to build a loyal following of active participants. Award points for posting posts AND points for reading posts. When you get a certain number of points, the points can be cashed in for on site ads (or ads on another site I guess). That way you could also have free and paid members, with paid members getting lots of points for ads. (I remember the OTO was very powerful on the old CYN.) How about contacting Russell Brunson and ask him for some tips? No harm in asking!
Re: 10 ideas to make you money in 2010 - Interesting post Yinka and he gives some good advice, no harm in adding to your business if that is what you want to do. MichelleJ


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