• Your website is supposed to get business for your company.
  • So many websites try to dazzle you with flash and graphics, but that's to attract you to a site.  You don't need to attract them once they're already there!  The only thing the "dazzle" does is make it take longer to download your page and irritate your prospect.  This can be particularly annoying for the dial-up users.  (We previously had a link here to a terrible site, but they "wised up" and removed the offending page!)
     
  • Your website should "immediately" tell the customer what you do.  Notice our home page:  it says "Web Design" and "Professional Services."  It immediately tells you what we do.  Click here to see a website that fails miserably in this area.
     
  • There are exceptions ... some sites are primarily informational to their company or group, but those are the exception, and generally have some appeal to the public as well.

   

• Your website should rank well in search engines.
  • So many places make promises;  so many want you to pay-for-click.  Surprise!  No one can guarantee you'll always be number 1.  So, we work the system as best we can to build your reputation within the search engines.  An example of this is one of our clients, Reliable Go-Karts.  They have a very generic name, with many go-kart companies using "reliable" to describe their product.  As of 12/08/2007, in a Google search for "reliable go-karts," there were 60,100 responses.  Reliable Go-Karts was number one.

   

  • With just the term "go-karts," there were 257,000 responses.  Reliable Go-Karts was number 28.  Twenty-eight out of 1/4 million!
     
  • Is Reliable Go-Karts a large conglomerate that's been around for 100 years?  No, they're a "mom & pop" shop whose website is a little over 4 years old (established 1/30/2003).  Their traffic?  About 700 unique visitors per day (that's about 20,000 visitors per month, or 1/4 million per year).  And, about 83% of visitors add them to their "Favorites."
     
  • Do we have others?  Yes, most of our customers report good response in search engines.  One of the most impressive was Gloryland Express.  They were in Google within 7 days of our submitting their site.

   

• Your website should "solve a problem" for your customer so you can make the sale.
  • Websites provide information to solve problems for the company's customer, allowing the customer to purchase.  Sites that do anything else are generally missing the point.  (What's the problem?  It could be lack of information, or lack of access to your company.  The bottom-line is to "make the sale.")
    
    Links to other sites should be used sparingly, if at all.  There may be complementary sites, or people with whom you do business, that you want to help promote.  But, why promote weather pages, horoscopes, etc., when all it does it take people away from your site?  (You'll notice we have several links to sites we think "do it wrong," as we think these sites demonstrate our point.  But, we open those in a new page, so you still have us in an open window.)
     
• Use pictures, but only ones relevant to your site.
  • Pictures are great for a website, but ensure they're related to your message.  I recently opened a site that is a competitor to one of my clients.  It was a beautiful site with great pictures.  The problem was that you didn't know what the company did -- all you knew was the site was pretty.
     
• No pop-ups!
  • Most of us run pop-up blockers that eliminate about 99% of pop-ups.  Why would you intentionally aggravate your prospect who is visiting your site by forcing them to deal with annoying pop-ups?  It's even worse when the pop-up is advertising something not sold by your site!
     
• No "Flash"
  • Yes, it looks cool.  It also slows down the surfer, especially if they're on dial-up.  So, most companies put a "skip intro" on their site.  But, by saying "skip intro" you're saying the info isn't worth watching.  So it is worth watching, or not?  Bottom line:  forget it.  Say it in your site.
     
• No ads
  • You brought people to your site to what -- send them somewhere else?  Yes, there are sites that do just that, and they are annoying.  Don't be tempted by the few cents you'll make by hosting others' ads.  Keep your customer in your site.
     
• Your website should be easy to navigate.
  • If the customer can't get around the website, they'll shop elsewhere.  Notice the easy to ready navigation on the upper-left of this page.  (If you are an organization that gets donations from sponsors, that's fine, and sponsors shouldn't be confused with pay-per-click ads.)
     
• Your website should be easy to read.
  • Websites that use a lot of different fonts and graphics just confuse the reader, making them go elsewhere.  See how annoying this is?  (If you couldn't read that, it asked, "See how annoying this is?")  Why would anyone annoy their prospects with something like that?  Some might think it "cute," but it's never "cute" to lose prospects.
     
  • Ever notice how so many websites use small type?  That's great if you want to sell to teenagers, but if you want customers over 30, the fonts should be big enough to read.  Or, at least they should be able to be modified by the person reading your site.  How?

• You can learn a lot about "what to do" by seeing what not to do.*
  • Avoid taglines that don't tell anything about your company (taken from actual websites):
    • "Creating customers online"
    • "eBusiness for leaders: Enabling corporations to control the key elements of eBusiness selling"
    • "Harness the power of convergence with (company's name)"
    • "Software for the customer economy: next-generation CRM software"

     

  • This is a website that wants to show off what the webmaster can do ... but it doesn't do anything else.
     
  • Bad taste -- this link no longer works (thankfully).  It was an animation for an insurance company that showed a plane flying into one of two towers.  It then said, "Be prepared for any emergency" and suggested the viewer purchase life insurance from them.  No, we couldn't possibly have made this up.
     
  • Click here to see two photos of a dentist.  Which would you allow to work inside our mouth -- your daughter's date for the prom, or the guy in the lab coat?
     
  • Annoying navigation, but not nearly as bad as the old page they had.
     
  • The sad thing is that someone spent a lot of time to make this page as annoying as it is.
     
  • This is a composer's page.  Hint:  move your cursor over the designs on the highway.  Talk about BAD navigation!
     
  • Spelling is a lost art.  (This website was fixed ... an old screen shot will be displayed on this link.)
     
  • Another navigation disaster.
     
  • One more bad navigation example.
     
  • We couldn't resist adding one more bad navigation example!

   

• Give a little
  • Provide information that's useful, but isn't selling.  Reliable Go-Karts has multiple pages on go-kart features, manufacturers, and maintenance, strictly for the purpose of being a service to their viewers.  Not only does this keep them coming back (which "impresses" the search engines, it also "impresses" the search engines that you're providing "free" info.  If you think this doesn't work, look above for their ratings in the search engines.

   

(*Some of these websites may have been "repaired" after we put these links in here.)