- by Bill Brine-Lead Generation Master
Your business opportunity website can be a great source of leads for your business. But you must be careful about how you design and manage your business website these days.
The website boom of the early 21st century showed us that the business world was indeed ready to enter into the world of the internet. However, times have changed, and many of the websites have not changed with it. Here are a few mistakes that website owners make in today's internet culture:
1)Infrequent updates
To have a website that gains the most business, you must have the best, most up to date website possible. If a visitor feels that you do not properly maintain and update you website, then chances are they will leave and find a similar business that does. Make sure you update your content on a consistent basis.
2) JavaScript pop ups
A JavaScript pop up is a notification window that opens when you visit a website that presents a message or advertisement and has an "ok" button at the end. This was extremely popular during the website boom, but quickly become a no-no, mainly because people over used it. Not only would they add the pop up to the main page of their website, but they would also add one to each and every sub page. Typically these pop ups did not contain any information that would be viewed as important to the viewer. This was annoying then, and is much more annoying now. If you have a message that MUST display to the user before they can go further on your website, then a JavaScript pop up may still be a good option, but I strongly caution you to not overuse it, if you use it at all.
3) Heavy graphics
You have to remember that a percentage of your visitors will be on a dialup connection, which means they will have trouble downloading your website if you have a large number of graphics on your website. Unless your website is in flash, I would try to avoid using any type of animated graphic, since they typically have large file sizes. Remember: people are not looking for fancy graphics, they are looking for information.
4) Using heavy, high contrasting colors
This was another thing that was popular during the internet boom that quickly become unpopular due to overuse. It was once believed that high contrasting colors would grab the users attention. While this may be true, I do not recommend using this technique. People are looking for information. Use of high contrasting colors cheapens the look of your website and makes it very unprofessional.
5) Cluttered pages
If your website seems be cluttered, visitors will be less likely to view further into your website, especially if they think they will have to weed out the information they need from the information that is useless to them. You do not want to have too much information on each page, and you never want more then one topic on each page. A good navigation system will eliminate any problem you have.
6) Lack of a navigation system
Many websites created during the internet boom lacked one of the most important parts of a website: a navigation menu. Once a visitor clicked on a page they were taken to a new page without a way to return or access additional pages within the website. A navigation menu ensures that the visitor will be able to view your entire website. A good navigation menu will take the visitor back to the page that they originally come from, to the main page, and to the other major parts of the website. Additionally, the navigation menu should have links to things such as website polices, term and conditions, and a site map.
7) Overusing Advertising
This is a fairly new problem with websites, especially since Google started their Adsense program. Many websites have more ads than information on the page. A visitor does not want to have to weed though the ads to find the content that they are looking for. Studies have shown that a visitor is more likely to click on an advertisement link if they do not feel that they are being bombarded by them. This is definitely a situation where the saying "less is more" is true.
8) Audio that plays as soon as the page loads
This is one of my pet peeves. Unless I am expecting it to happen, I detest going to a web page that bombards me with an audio message as soon as the page loads. When that happens, I usually just close the page immediately without even reading what it has to say. You can bet that many other people feel the same way. Don't use an audio message that plays immediately unless the visitor is expecting it. At least, provide a link to play the audio and describe it so that, if interested, the visitor can press the Play button to hear it.
Avoid some of these errors and people will visit your website more often and stay there longer.
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Bill Brine-Lead Generation Master
PO Box 121, Amherst, NS B4H 3Y6 Canada
Ph: 902.667.0798
Fax: 760.280.8685
Skype: billbrine
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