Chances are the first interaction someone has with your business is through your website. Having a well designed website can build trust, give a visitor a positive impression of your business and increase your conversion rates. Having a poorly designed site is the equivalent of wearing a bad polyester suite to a business meeting, it cheapens your message, brand, image and can cause you to lose business. Here 4 ways to distract visitors on your website and annoy them at the same time.
Don’t Flash!
A Big Disadvantage to using a flash intro, is that it acts like a force field preventing any search engine from entering and indexing content on your site. If the pages on your site are not being indexed you will not be found when someone searches for a product or service that you sell. It can sometimes take anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds before any content loads. Respect a visitors time.
Here is an example of a why a flash intro is a bad idea and more importantly why you should stay away from it at all costs. Pay attention to the slow load bad sound effects and voice overs. Then ask yourself would you do business with this company?
Another example of a bad use of flash can be found on mrbottles.com. Although they do not have a flash intro, they do something that is as equally annoying, embedding a flash spokesman on their home page. Every time the home page reloads or a visitor returns to The Mr Bottles home page he magically reappears. Websites don’t need spokesmen, they need quality content. Both sites are perfect example of why it sometimes makes sense to hire a professional web designer and stay away from flash.
Background Music:
Music belongs on your IPOD not your website. If you want to enhance your visitors experience again, create great content! If you are not a band, or your website has nothing to do with the music industry then do not embed music on your site. Look at it this way. Not everybody has the same taste in music that you do and trying to figure out how to turn down the volume when being blasted by your musical stylings sometimes presents a challenge.
Don’t hold your visitors hostage!
If people want to leave your site, let them! I hate trying to leave a site and just as I am about to click off the page, a warning appears asking me if I am sure I want to leave. Visitors are not stupid and they don’t need to be told or warned that they are leaving your website. Instead of begging them to stay, you should be asking yourself why they are leaving. If your site is filled with quality content chances are pretty good they will be back and share you site with people they know.
Don’t play hide and seek:
Don’t make a visitor search your entire site for a way to contact you. Your contact information is the most important information to have it on every page of your website. In fact placing your phone number in the meta description of each page will ensure that your number is available in the search engine result description.
A client of mine once told me that the reason he kept his contact information hidden was that he did not want people to call him, consequently, he is no longer in business! Make sure you let your customers, and first time visitors know how to get in touch with you. If you display your contact information in a few easy to find location on your website you may be surprised that sales actually increase.
Just an FYI, if you someone is calling you with a complaint, listen attentively and provide them with a solution! A complaint is opportunity to fix a problem and your customer is giving you the chance to resolve it, if you don’t you may not get another chance.
Remember your website should should be focused on your product and services, not how creative you can get distracting your visitors! I look forward to your thoughts.