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Atricle Dump - What Not To Do...
Can we franchise the world and keep the greed and corruption away, by taking out the human factor? Many people agree that the United Nations is not solving the differences of the human species in the present period and that something must be done to prevent a repeat in history like after the collapse of the League of Nations.What we need is a World Franchise System, but the system must be run by Artificial Intelligence and Not By Humans; Of course there will still be some humans running some of the Systems, but mostly humans will have a system running at optimum so they can do their other corrupt activities without destroying the civilization, until they soon figure out that; John Nash's thoughts were not such a bad idea after all.If we eliminate the basics and provide a stable platform then we can much more easily solve these other issues. Let mankind have his sound and fury in sports, Virtual Reality, contests, debate and such to help them enjoy their life experience, but also allow the change which is to occur as the species progresses. World Franchise System run by Artificial Intelligence and Not By Humans would work well and perhaps that is the answer for the future. Consider this in 2006.
Guess who makes the sale?
If all you supply is an order form on your website, your legitimacy may be questioned. Why can't you answer the telephone? Why hide behind an anonymous and cold email address? Make it easy for your existing and potential customers to talk with you.
It is vital that you list all possible ways that they can reach you. By creating a contact page, you will be able to answer enquiries and reinforce the fact that there is an actual person or persons behind the website.
9. Unchanging or Out-Dated Content
If you work in a constantly changing industry, it’s important that your content remains fresh and up to date. Nothing will turn away visitors more quickly than out of date information. In addition, if you keep your content fresh your site will attract repeat visitors and repeat visitors are more likely to turn into customers.
Have a “What's New” or “Latest News” section. Even if your industry is not that fast moving, there will be times when you want to update your visitors with current news or promotions and using this section of your web site enables you to inform repeat visitors that there is information they have not seen previously on your web site.
10. "Me, me, me!" instead of "You, you, you" Generally speaking, your visitors do not care about you, your company or your thoughts. What they do care about is whether or not you can solve their particular problem or fulfil their individual need. Web sites that promote their Mission Statement or display pictures of the company building really don't bode well for keeping the interest of site visitors.
On the other hand, sites that speak directly to potential customers about how they can solve their problems, make their lives easier, safer, richer or more comfortable have a much better chance of keeping their visitors attention.
Concentrate on what your customers want to know, rather than what you want to tell them. In order to find out what your customers need, it is useful to solicit feedback from them. A common way to do this is by monitoring your enquiry emails for common themes, creating a feedback-form on the site, or to add an interactive forum.
As well as addressing all the possible questions about your product or service, it is important to address other, less obvious anxieties. If you are asking for contact details from your prospects, for example if you are asking them to subscri
The pace of change in today’s business environment is inarguably staggering. Growth of e-commerce; changes to business structures; evolving relationships; changes to funding arrangements; access to capital and its sources. All occurring at increasingly exponential rates. Fast. The fact that there is more computing power in the average notebook computer today than it took to put a man on the moon should illustrate how fast things change, and whether in senior management or a business owner you need to keep pace.In particular, you must stay abreast of changes in your competitive environment, and remain fully apprised of mechanisms that will enable a response fast enough to keep you in the game. This article will look at one of those mechanisms, access to capital and through that, free cash flow. In doing so we’ll use an intuitive framework, peppered with some economics. Why? Intuitive analysis is ideal for answering specific questions; in this case ‘What will best enable my firm to manage rapid changes to competitive economic conditions and stay in the game?’ And I’ll use economics because of Steven Levitt, America’s most outstanding economist under-40, who along with Stephen Dubner considers that ‘if morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work.’By speaking to specific anchor points, strategic issues affecting the access to capital problem can be explored and initiatives developed to allow a timely solution. In short, it’s the fastest and most accurate way to answer the question you face, because it’s easier to understand and doesn’t get bogged down in extraneous, unnecessary analysis.One of the anchor points in contemporary business is access to capital, especially when it helps maintain free cash-flow. In many respects they are one and the same thing, the difference merely being access to capital is a necessary precursor
There is a lot written about how to design a great web site and ways to attract and keep visitors, but a lot less information is available to outline how, every day, thousands of web sites are finding common ways to confuse or alienate hoards of potential customers. Although many professional web site designers know about the obvious "no-no’s”, there are still many finer points that frustrate or irritate visitors and make them leave.
We have identified 11 design and construction mistakes that can make or break a web site. To avoid having your visitors "click-away" from your site in droves, make sure you are not falling into any of the following traps:
1. Clogging Up Their Internet Connection
Imagine, your new potential customer is happily surfing using their favourite search engine looking for your product or service and everything's going smoothly. Your web site appears in the first page of listings (congratulations, you must have put into practice all the information you read our DIY Internet Marketing Guides or taken out one of our highly-esteemed web site marketing packages J) and they click through to your homepage.
Then their Internet connection starts to clog up. It begins to creak and groan under the strain of downloading your homepage’s numerous images, animated bits and bobs an all its bells and whistles and it takes an age to appear. They look at the progress bar at the bottom of their screen and it’s more grey than blue. They look at their watch, start picking at their finger nails, tapping their toes, rolling their eyes… and then in frustration they click on the back button at the top of their screen and click on the next web site in the search engines results list. Well done - you've just sent another visitor to your competition.
For tips on how to design a web site that is both appealing to your customers and to the “organic” search engines, read our DIY Internet Marketing Guide “Start at the Beginning”. For an excerpt visit: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html
2. Counting Customers
One of the classic mistakes that really makes me cringe every time I see it is visitor counters. It makes 3 distinct impressions:
1. “Do you like my new toy web site, my cousins-stepsisters-uncle built it for me. Did you see the picture of my dog on the front page? Isn’t it great?” Endearing? Maybe. Professional? No.
2. “You are not important, you are just visitor number 62. 61 was just here and 63 will be along in a minute. You’re not an individual customer with specific needs to fulfil, just a number.”
3. Then a visitor looks at the actual number and thinks…”62? Has this site has only had 62 visitors? They must be rubbish.” or conversely, “162,853,426 visitors, they must rig that counter thing.” Get rid of your counters – now!
Measuring your sites visitors can be done by analysing your web statistics, and much more detailed information is normally available. For example; which web site or search engine referred the visitor to you, which pages they visit, which pages they exit from (very important – why are they leaving?) and also which key-phrases were used to find your web site. For more information about how to understand and make use of your web site statistics, read our guide “Measuring Success”, for an excerpt visit: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_6.html
3. Inconsistent Navigation
Imagine sitting down at a restaurant and the waiter comes over to you and hands you five different menus, one for the starters, one for the entrees, one for the vegetarian dishes, one for the desserts, and one for the drinks. Annoying? Then imagine if each menu had a different design, typeface, format and layout for listing the items. Confusing? Irritating?
Nobody wants to work that hard at choosing their dinner, you’re hungry and you just want a meal. Don't make your visitors work hard either by expecting them to re-learn your navigation system each time they enter another section of your site. They are also hungry, for useful information, and they're even more impatient.
The pages on your website should be easily connected. To do this, every section should connect to the main (home) page, with a clear and concise menu. Don't make your visitors spend a lot of time looking for different sections. Help them by ensuring that the navigation of your site remains constant throughout all pages.
Button and link names also need to tell the visitor where the link leads them. It sounds obvious but make it as easy as possible for a visitor to know where they're going before they click. Make your links and buttons as descriptive as possible.
4. Not Enough Information
It is a common mistake to give a limited amount of information on a web site with a vain hope that the customer will contact you for more information. They wont. You can guarantee that a competitor will provide the technical spec, the price list or what ever else is required on their web site and that customer will find it and eventually buy the product from them.
To keep your visitors progressing through information gathering stage and on to the buying process on your web site, supply all the information they need. Even if they don’t buy today, it will be your page that gets printed off or stored in their favourites folder, and you they come back to when they’re ready to buy. It is helpful to have a section that is devoted to answering common questions and by creating a FAQ page your potential customers can easily find the answers to their questions and will be more likely to order from your web site.
In addition, many visitors interested in gathering information on a particular subject will sign up for emailed newsletters (like this one!) and stay subscribed as long as the correspondence they receive is relevant and useful. This is a great way to build ongoing, online relationships with your potential customers and establish your credibility. Top web sites work on developing an email list of prospects that can be contacted in the future. Make sure your email list subscription area has a prominent position on your web site, preferably at the top of every page.
For more detailed information about how to design your web site with both high search engine listings and customer usage in mind, take a look at our ebook “Start at the Beginning”. For an excerpt visit: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html
5 Skip Intro/Click Here to Enter
Go on, admit it - you once thought the best thing on the Internet planet was a web site that started up by having a revolving animation of the company logo that bounced around, spun a few times then settled in the middle of the screen with those the immortal words: "Click here to enter site" Isn’t that what you were trying to do when you typed in the web address or clicked on the link that bought you here?
“Enter site” is also what all your visitors are trying to do when they type in your web address or click on your link so make sure they are not presented with some nauseating bouncing, spinning distortions of your logo, or worse, duff, irrelevant music. They are not interested in how clever your web designer is with Flash or their taste in music, they want to get to the information they’re looking for as quickly as possible.
Always make sure you home page or advert-landing page is quick to load and don’t forget to check it at different connection speeds. Keep the file sizes small, and above all, avoid anything on you page that would require the dreaded “Loading…” message. If you really can’t bear to drop the Flash entry page, at the very least give the choice to “Skip the intro” and let them get to what they’re looking for.
6. Animation
Children under 10 like to watch animated cartoons. Business professionals and most other adults don’t have the time. Your website is here to do business not entertain children (unless it’s an entertainment web site for children!). It is supposed to be a serious tool in your marketing armoury and should be used to convey useful information to your visitors and convince them that you are worth doing business with. Filling it full of swirling graphics, flashing logos and spinning pictures and the rest of Pandora’s box of visual delights will just make your visitors distracted and nauseous.
Sites that include “clever” Flash animations; multiple animated gifs or flying words are really annoying. They take away from the content and distract the visitor from achieving their goals. Unless your site is an entertainment site, try to avoid maddening motion. However, if your product or service can be better demonstrated using Flash, Quick Time, or other multimedia, and many can, offer your visitors the chance to click a link to view it. But don't force-feed them.
7. Unreadable Text
Computer monitors really aren't the best medium for reading. By the time you’ve scrolled down a full screen's worth, your eyes start to blur, you feel slightly lost, your head hurts and your interest begins to wane. If a page requires two full screens of scrolling or more, simply split it up into multiple pages. Don’t make your visitors wade through big chunks of unbroken text, use titles, sub-titles, small paragraphs, bullet points and numbering. Don’t torture your visitors; make your pages easy to read and therefore less daunting.
8. Who are You/Where are You? No Obvious Ways to Contact The Company So now you’ve built a logical web site, you’ve instilled confidence and credibility and your new potential customer just has one question… They click on three, four, five pages but can't find your contact details anywhere. They already have another window open with your competitor's website - complete with email address, telephone number, fax number, street address and map.
Guess who makes the sale?
If all you supply is an order form on your website, your legitimacy may be questioned. Why can't you answer the telephone? Why hide behind an anonymous and cold email address? Make it easy for your existing and potential customers to talk with you.
It is vital that you list all possible ways that they can reach you. By creating a contact page, you will be able to answer enquiries and reinforce the fact that there is an actual person or persons behind the website.
9. Unchanging or Out-Dated Content
If you work in a constantly changing industry, it’s important that your content remains fresh and up to date. Nothing will turn away visitors more quickly than out of date information. In addition, if you keep your content fresh your site will attract repeat visitors and repeat visitors are more likely to turn into customers.
Have a “What's New” or “Latest News” section. Even if your industry is not that fast moving, there will be times when you want to update your visitors with current news or promotions and using this section of your web site enables you to inform repeat visitors that there is information they have not seen previously on your web site.
10. "Me, me, me!" instead of "You, you, you" Generally speaking, your visitors do not care about you, your company or your thoughts. What they do care about is whether or not you can solve their particular problem or fulfil their individual need. Web sites that promote their Mission Statement or display pictures of the company building really don't bode well for keeping the interest of site visitors.
On the other hand, sites that speak directly to potential customers about how they can solve their problems, make their lives easier, safer, richer or more comfortable have a much better chance of keeping their visitors attention.
Concentrate on what your customers want to know, rather than what you want to tell them. In order to find out what your customers need, it is useful to solicit feedback from them. A common way to do this is by monitoring your enquiry emails for common themes, creating a feedback-form on the site, or to add an interactive forum.
As well as addressing all the possible questions about your product or service, it is important to address other, less obvious anxieties. If you are asking for contact details from your prospects, for example if you are asking them to subscrib
"I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more luck I have."Thomas JeffersonI couldn’t agree more with Mr. Jefferson, luck is truly a product of our efforts, hard work, and the persistence we maintain to get what we want in life – to make our dreams a reality.Some people think that you need a great amount of luck in order to be successful in life. I don’t think that’s entirely true, but I do think that a little bit of luck can really make things happens for us.Luck is that strange thing that comes to you when you least expect it and it usually hits you hard. I ran into some luck last winter when my mom informed me that she was taking care (she’s a nurse) of a businessman who, “supposedly made it really big” she explained to me.Now being a curious entrepreneur, I automatically wondered who this person was and how he became successful in life. After a few days of begging my mom for his number so that I could give him a call and inquire about his business, she finally broke and gave it up (see what I mean about persistence – thanks mom!).A few days later I called this man and began talking about his business and the story behind his financial empire he built in the investment industry. I just kept on asking and asking and he was very glad to share and share, it was great (as an entrepreneur never stop asking questions, ok).It turned out that this man used to run the second largest bond firm in the country some years back – wow! After that first call he even invited me over to his Manhattan apartment and we’ve been in contact ever since.I’ve learned a lot about business from this man and I cherish the long talks that we’ve had about various business topics, family, and friends—priceless. So would I call it luck that I met this person? Yes and no. No because I was the one who decided to take the chance to cold call this total stranger and s
1. “Do you like my new toy web site, my cousins-stepsisters-uncle built it for me. Did you see the picture of my dog on the front page? Isn’t it great?” Endearing? Maybe. Professional? No.
2. “You are not important, you are just visitor number 62. 61 was just here and 63 will be along in a minute. You’re not an individual customer with specific needs to fulfil, just a number.”
3. Then a visitor looks at the actual number and thinks…”62? Has this site has only had 62 visitors? They must be rubbish.” or conversely, “162,853,426 visitors, they must rig that counter thing.” Get rid of your counters – now!
Measuring your sites visitors can be done by analysing your web statistics, and much more detailed information is normally available. For example; which web site or search engine referred the visitor to you, which pages they visit, which pages they exit from (very important – why are they leaving?) and also which key-phrases were used to find your web site. For more information about how to understand and make use of your web site statistics, read our guide “Measuring Success”, for an excerpt visit: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_6.html
3. Inconsistent Navigation
Imagine sitting down at a restaurant and the waiter comes over to you and hands you five different menus, one for the starters, one for the entrees, one for the vegetarian dishes, one for the desserts, and one for the drinks. Annoying? Then imagine if each menu had a different design, typeface, format and layout for listing the items. Confusing? Irritating?
Nobody wants to work that hard at choosing their dinner, you’re hungry and you just want a meal. Don't make your visitors work hard either by expecting them to re-learn your navigation system each time they enter another section of your site. They are also hungry, for useful information, and they're even more impatient.
The pages on your website should be easily connected. To do this, every section should connect to the main (home) page, with a clear and concise menu. Don't make your visitors spend a lot of time looking for different sections. Help them by ensuring that the navigation of your site remains constant throughout all pages.
Button and link names also need to tell the visitor where the link leads them. It sounds obvious but make it as easy as possible for a visitor to know where they're going before they click. Make your links and buttons as descriptive as possible.
4. Not Enough Information
It is a common mistake to give a limited amount of information on a web site with a vain hope that the customer will contact you for more information. They wont. You can guarantee that a competitor will provide the technical spec, the price list or what ever else is required on their web site and that customer will find it and eventually buy the product from them.
To keep your visitors progressing through information gathering stage and on to the buying process on your web site, supply all the information they need. Even if they don’t buy today, it will be your page that gets printed off or stored in their favourites folder, and you they come back to when they’re ready to buy. It is helpful to have a section that is devoted to answering common questions and by creating a FAQ page your potential customers can easily find the answers to their questions and will be more likely to order from your web site.
In addition, many visitors interested in gathering information on a particular subject will sign up for emailed newsletters (like this one!) and stay subscribed as long as the correspondence they receive is relevant and useful. This is a great way to build ongoing, online relationships with your potential customers and establish your credibility. Top web sites work on developing an email list of prospects that can be contacted in the future. Make sure your email list subscription area has a prominent position on your web site, preferably at the top of every page.
For more detailed information about how to design your web site with both high search engine listings and customer usage in mind, take a look at our ebook “Start at the Beginning”. For an excerpt visit: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html
5 Skip Intro/Click Here to Enter
Go on, admit it - you once thought the best thing on the Internet planet was a web site that started up by having a revolving animation of the company logo that bounced around, spun a few times then settled in the middle of the screen with those the immortal words: "Click here to enter site" Isn’t that what you were trying to do when you typed in the web address or clicked on the link that bought you here?
“Enter site” is also what all your visitors are trying to do when they type in your web address or click on your link so make sure they are not presented with some nauseating bouncing, spinning distortions of your logo, or worse, duff, irrelevant music. They are not interested in how clever your web designer is with Flash or their taste in music, they want to get to the information they’re looking for as quickly as possible.
Always make sure you home page or advert-landing page is quick to load and don’t forget to check it at different connection speeds. Keep the file sizes small, and above all, avoid anything on you page that would require the dreaded “Loading…” message. If you really can’t bear to drop the Flash entry page, at the very least give the choice to “Skip the intro” and let them get to what they’re looking for.
6. Animation
Children under 10 like to watch animated cartoons. Business professionals and most other adults don’t have the time. Your website is here to do business not entertain children (unless it’s an entertainment web site for children!). It is supposed to be a serious tool in your marketing armoury and should be used to convey useful information to your visitors and convince them that you are worth doing business with. Filling it full of swirling graphics, flashing logos and spinning pictures and the rest of Pandora’s box of visual delights will just make your visitors distracted and nauseous.
Sites that include “clever” Flash animations; multiple animated gifs or flying words are really annoying. They take away from the content and distract the visitor from achieving their goals. Unless your site is an entertainment site, try to avoid maddening motion. However, if your product or service can be better demonstrated using Flash, Quick Time, or other multimedia, and many can, offer your visitors the chance to click a link to view it. But don't force-feed them.
7. Unreadable Text
Computer monitors really aren't the best medium for reading. By the time you’ve scrolled down a full screen's worth, your eyes start to blur, you feel slightly lost, your head hurts and your interest begins to wane. If a page requires two full screens of scrolling or more, simply split it up into multiple pages. Don’t make your visitors wade through big chunks of unbroken text, use titles, sub-titles, small paragraphs, bullet points and numbering. Don’t torture your visitors; make your pages easy to read and therefore less daunting.
8. Who are You/Where are You? No Obvious Ways to Contact The Company So now you’ve built a logical web site, you’ve instilled confidence and credibility and your new potential customer just has one question… They click on three, four, five pages but can't find your contact details anywhere. They already have another window open with your competitor's website - complete with email address, telephone number, fax number, street address and map.
Guess who makes the sale?
If all you supply is an order form on your website, your legitimacy may be questioned. Why can't you answer the telephone? Why hide behind an anonymous and cold email address? Make it easy for your existing and potential customers to talk with you.
It is vital that you list all possible ways that they can reach you. By creating a contact page, you will be able to answer enquiries and reinforce the fact that there is an actual person or persons behind the website.
9. Unchanging or Out-Dated Content
If you work in a constantly changing industry, it’s important that your content remains fresh and up to date. Nothing will turn away visitors more quickly than out of date information. In addition, if you keep your content fresh your site will attract repeat visitors and repeat visitors are more likely to turn into customers.
Have a “What's New” or “Latest News” section. Even if your industry is not that fast moving, there will be times when you want to update your visitors with current news or promotions and using this section of your web site enables you to inform repeat visitors that there is information they have not seen previously on your web site.
10. "Me, me, me!" instead of "You, you, you" Generally speaking, your visitors do not care about you, your company or your thoughts. What they do care about is whether or not you can solve their particular problem or fulfil their individual need. Web sites that promote their Mission Statement or display pictures of the company building really don't bode well for keeping the interest of site visitors.
On the other hand, sites that speak directly to potential customers about how they can solve their problems, make their lives easier, safer, richer or more comfortable have a much better chance of keeping their visitors attention.
Concentrate on what your customers want to know, rather than what you want to tell them. In order to find out what your customers need, it is useful to solicit feedback from them. A common way to do this is by monitoring your enquiry emails for common themes, creating a feedback-form on the site, or to add an interactive forum.
As well as addressing all the possible questions about your product or service, it is important to address other, less obvious anxieties. If you are asking for contact details from your prospects, for example if you are asking them to subscri
The ability to make the right decision at the right time is the most desired quality in any business entrepreneur. And there are certain business decisions that can take your entrepreneurial ambitions further ahead than others. The decision to incorporate your business is one such decision that can affect the future of your business in a positive direction.Before explaining several benefits of incorporation, let us give you the definition of corporation from a legal point of view. A corporation is regarded as a separate legal entity, whose existence is independent of that of its owners. The process of incorporation is guided by the charter or certificate of incorporation of the respective states. To incorporate a business, you have to fill out the forms for this Charter and file all the papers along with the requisite fees to the proper state authority.If you are planning to incorporate, you are moving towards the right direction, because the process of incorporation comes with the following benefits:Incorporation protects you from the disadvantages of sole proprietorship. As such you no longer remain personally liable with regards to business debts. In case of a sole proprietorship or partnership, your personal properties can be seized by the creditors in case you default on the payment of your business debts. These personal properties include your home, savings and other assets. But incorporation of your business makes you one of the shareholders in your company and as such, if your business is down, as a shareholder you have nothing to lose other than the money you have invested in your company. Your other properties are safe from liability.As a corporation your company gains a much longer life span. In case of sole proprietorship or in the partnership business, the business virtually comes to an end in the event of the death of the proprietor or one of the partners. But a corporati
To keep your visitors progressing through information gathering stage and on to the buying process on your web site, supply all the information they need. Even if they don’t buy today, it will be your page that gets printed off or stored in their favourites folder, and you they come back to when they’re ready to buy. It is helpful to have a section that is devoted to answering common questions and by creating a FAQ page your potential customers can easily find the answers to their questions and will be more likely to order from your web site.
In addition, many visitors interested in gathering information on a particular subject will sign up for emailed newsletters (like this one!) and stay subscribed as long as the correspondence they receive is relevant and useful. This is a great way to build ongoing, online relationships with your potential customers and establish your credibility. Top web sites work on developing an email list of prospects that can be contacted in the future. Make sure your email list subscription area has a prominent position on your web site, preferably at the top of every page.
For more detailed information about how to design your web site with both high search engine listings and customer usage in mind, take a look at our ebook “Start at the Beginning”. For an excerpt visit: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html
5 Skip Intro/Click Here to Enter
Go on, admit it - you once thought the best thing on the Internet planet was a web site that started up by having a revolving animation of the company logo that bounced around, spun a few times then settled in the middle of the screen with those the immortal words: "Click here to enter site" Isn’t that what you were trying to do when you typed in the web address or clicked on the link that bought you here?
“Enter site” is also what all your visitors are trying to do when they type in your web address or click on your link so make sure they are not presented with some nauseating bouncing, spinning distortions of your logo, or worse, duff, irrelevant music. They are not interested in how clever your web designer is with Flash or their taste in music, they want to get to the information they’re looking for as quickly as possible.
Always make sure you home page or advert-landing page is quick to load and don’t forget to check it at different connection speeds. Keep the file sizes small, and above all, avoid anything on you page that would require the dreaded “Loading…” message. If you really can’t bear to drop the Flash entry page, at the very least give the choice to “Skip the intro” and let them get to what they’re looking for.
6. Animation
Children under 10 like to watch animated cartoons. Business professionals and most other adults don’t have the time. Your website is here to do business not entertain children (unless it’s an entertainment web site for children!). It is supposed to be a serious tool in your marketing armoury and should be used to convey useful information to your visitors and convince them that you are worth doing business with. Filling it full of swirling graphics, flashing logos and spinning pictures and the rest of Pandora’s box of visual delights will just make your visitors distracted and nauseous.
Sites that include “clever” Flash animations; multiple animated gifs or flying words are really annoying. They take away from the content and distract the visitor from achieving their goals. Unless your site is an entertainment site, try to avoid maddening motion. However, if your product or service can be better demonstrated using Flash, Quick Time, or other multimedia, and many can, offer your visitors the chance to click a link to view it. But don't force-feed them.
7. Unreadable Text
Computer monitors really aren't the best medium for reading. By the time you’ve scrolled down a full screen's worth, your eyes start to blur, you feel slightly lost, your head hurts and your interest begins to wane. If a page requires two full screens of scrolling or more, simply split it up into multiple pages. Don’t make your visitors wade through big chunks of unbroken text, use titles, sub-titles, small paragraphs, bullet points and numbering. Don’t torture your visitors; make your pages easy to read and therefore less daunting.
8. Who are You/Where are You? No Obvious Ways to Contact The Company So now you’ve built a logical web site, you’ve instilled confidence and credibility and your new potential customer just has one question… They click on three, four, five pages but can't find your contact details anywhere. They already have another window open with your competitor's website - complete with email address, telephone number, fax number, street address and map.
Guess who makes the sale?
If all you supply is an order form on your website, your legitimacy may be questioned. Why can't you answer the telephone? Why hide behind an anonymous and cold email address? Make it easy for your existing and potential customers to talk with you.
It is vital that you list all possible ways that they can reach you. By creating a contact page, you will be able to answer enquiries and reinforce the fact that there is an actual person or persons behind the website.
9. Unchanging or Out-Dated Content
If you work in a constantly changing industry, it’s important that your content remains fresh and up to date. Nothing will turn away visitors more quickly than out of date information. In addition, if you keep your content fresh your site will attract repeat visitors and repeat visitors are more likely to turn into customers.
Have a “What's New” or “Latest News” section. Even if your industry is not that fast moving, there will be times when you want to update your visitors with current news or promotions and using this section of your web site enables you to inform repeat visitors that there is information they have not seen previously on your web site.
10. "Me, me, me!" instead of "You, you, you" Generally speaking, your visitors do not care about you, your company or your thoughts. What they do care about is whether or not you can solve their particular problem or fulfil their individual need. Web sites that promote their Mission Statement or display pictures of the company building really don't bode well for keeping the interest of site visitors.
On the other hand, sites that speak directly to potential customers about how they can solve their problems, make their lives easier, safer, richer or more comfortable have a much better chance of keeping their visitors attention.
Concentrate on what your customers want to know, rather than what you want to tell them. In order to find out what your customers need, it is useful to solicit feedback from them. A common way to do this is by monitoring your enquiry emails for common themes, creating a feedback-form on the site, or to add an interactive forum.
As well as addressing all the possible questions about your product or service, it is important to address other, less obvious anxieties. If you are asking for contact details from your prospects, for example if you are asking them to subscri
Successful internet marketing is, was, and will always be about great content. Whether it’s a press release, a forum, your blog, or the hundreds of articles you offer for free on your site, it’s all just great content. Great content is what allows you to never have to “ask around” for links to your site or even pay ridiculous sums of money every month to get them. If you have great content on your site people will link to you naturally. And this is the only “sure” way to gain the exposure and search engine rankings that you need for your website. Period.It’s always going to be and always has been about great content. If you’re rankings have slipped recently and you’re wondering why, it all relates back to great content in one way or another. An old saying in SEO is that you should set a goal to add at least one page of original content to your site per week. Although I definitely agree with this saying, I haven’t done a great job at sticking to it. Think about it: just set aside one hour per week to write about a subject that you know a lot about that is also related to what you do. Now add that article to your site and submit it to a few of the reputable content sites that will circulate your article while you retain the rights. That’s it.I'm often amazed to read articles or forums from those claiming that content is the "new" way to go for solid, long-term search engine rankings. I've been involved in we content creation since 1998, and to be honest not a whole lot has changed. If you provide free resources that attract not only repeat visitors but natural links, traffic is the end result as it should be.Great content is a powerful sales tool as well. Writing about subjects that haven’t already been covered in your industry lets your site visitors know that you’re an authority on the subject. When that same visitor is ready to buy, they will turn to you as you have earned their trust by sho
Always make sure you home page or advert-landing page is quick to load and don’t forget to check it at different connection speeds. Keep the file sizes small, and above all, avoid anything on you page that would require the dreaded “Loading…” message. If you really can’t bear to drop the Flash entry page, at the very least give the choice to “Skip the intro” and let them get to what they’re looking for.
6. Animation
Children under 10 like to watch animated cartoons. Business professionals and most other adults don’t have the time. Your website is here to do business not entertain children (unless it’s an entertainment web site for children!). It is supposed to be a serious tool in your marketing armoury and should be used to convey useful information to your visitors and convince them that you are worth doing business with. Filling it full of swirling graphics, flashing logos and spinning pictures and the rest of Pandora’s box of visual delights will just make your visitors distracted and nauseous.
Sites that include “clever” Flash animations; multiple animated gifs or flying words are really annoying. They take away from the content and distract the visitor from achieving their goals. Unless your site is an entertainment site, try to avoid maddening motion. However, if your product or service can be better demonstrated using Flash, Quick Time, or other multimedia, and many can, offer your visitors the chance to click a link to view it. But don't force-feed them.
7. Unreadable Text
Computer monitors really aren't the best medium for reading. By the time you’ve scrolled down a full screen's worth, your eyes start to blur, you feel slightly lost, your head hurts and your interest begins to wane. If a page requires two full screens of scrolling or more, simply split it up into multiple pages. Don’t make your visitors wade through big chunks of unbroken text, use titles, sub-titles, small paragraphs, bullet points and numbering. Don’t torture your visitors; make your pages easy to read and therefore less daunting.
8. Who are You/Where are You? No Obvious Ways to Contact The Company So now you’ve built a logical web site, you’ve instilled confidence and credibility and your new potential customer just has one question… They click on three, four, five pages but can't find your contact details anywhere. They already have another window open with your competitor's website - complete with email address, telephone number, fax number, street address and map.
Guess who makes the sale?
If all you supply is an order form on your website, your legitimacy may be questioned. Why can't you answer the telephone? Why hide behind an anonymous and cold email address? Make it easy for your existing and potential customers to talk with you.
It is vital that you list all possible ways that they can reach you. By creating a contact page, you will be able to answer enquiries and reinforce the fact that there is an actual person or persons behind the website.
9. Unchanging or Out-Dated Content
If you work in a constantly changing industry, it’s important that your content remains fresh and up to date. Nothing will turn away visitors more quickly than out of date information. In addition, if you keep your content fresh your site will attract repeat visitors and repeat visitors are more likely to turn into customers.
Have a “What's New” or “Latest News” section. Even if your industry is not that fast moving, there will be times when you want to update your visitors with current news or promotions and using this section of your web site enables you to inform repeat visitors that there is information they have not seen previously on your web site.
10. "Me, me, me!" instead of "You, you, you" Generally speaking, your visitors do not care about you, your company or your thoughts. What they do care about is whether or not you can solve their particular problem or fulfil their individual need. Web sites that promote their Mission Statement or display pictures of the company building really don't bode well for keeping the interest of site visitors.
On the other hand, sites that speak directly to potential customers about how they can solve their problems, make their lives easier, safer, richer or more comfortable have a much better chance of keeping their visitors attention.
Concentrate on what your customers want to know, rather than what you want to tell them. In order to find out what your customers need, it is useful to solicit feedback from them. A common way to do this is by monitoring your enquiry emails for common themes, creating a feedback-form on the site, or to add an interactive forum.
As well as addressing all the possible questions about your product or service, it is important to address other, less obvious anxieties. If you are asking for contact details from your prospects, for example if you are asking them to subscri
Strategic planning is to out last and out survive the current competition and any soon to be competitors. Yet, executing the strategic business plan still alludes many executives and business owners. These 7 tips may help you to better achieve all those desired results articulated within your strategic plan. Adopt a proven, sustainable goal setting and goal achievement process.Goal planning, setting and achievement is not taught to the majority of individuals. Yet, these same individuals are expected to achieve goals. When an uniform goal achievement process is adopted from the top down, effective execution follows.Train your people all on the same goal setting and goal achievement process.Adoption of the goal achievement process must extend to training and developing everyone from the top down on how to use the process and any accompanying tools.Identify specifically who does what by when.Everyone should be part of the process and have specific goals to be achieved. However, these goals need to be written so that they automatically build the What’s In It for Me (WIIFM) leading to the What’s In It for Us (WIIFU).Conduct regular meetings to monitor the progress of the strategic plan.The plan must be monitored on a regular basis by those involved. This helps to avoid dead horses and leads to the next tip.Hold people accountable.Monitoring of the plan should create personal accountability. If your employees believe that they are part of the team striving to achieve the goals, then when others are not as dedicated they should be held accountable.Make necessary course corrections when unknown obstacles appear.Life is full of changes from 9/11 to fluctuating fuel prices. Course corrections need to be made when
Guess who makes the sale?
If all you supply is an order form on your website, your legitimacy may be questioned. Why can't you answer the telephone? Why hide behind an anonymous and cold email address? Make it easy for your existing and potential customers to talk with you.
It is vital that you list all possible ways that they can reach you. By creating a contact page, you will be able to answer enquiries and reinforce the fact that there is an actual person or persons behind the website.
9. Unchanging or Out-Dated Content
If you work in a constantly changing industry, it’s important that your content remains fresh and up to date. Nothing will turn away visitors more quickly than out of date information. In addition, if you keep your content fresh your site will attract repeat visitors and repeat visitors are more likely to turn into customers.
Have a “What's New” or “Latest News” section. Even if your industry is not that fast moving, there will be times when you want to update your visitors with current news or promotions and using this section of your web site enables you to inform repeat visitors that there is information they have not seen previously on your web site.
10. "Me, me, me!" instead of "You, you, you" Generally speaking, your visitors do not care about you, your company or your thoughts. What they do care about is whether or not you can solve their particular problem or fulfil their individual need. Web sites that promote their Mission Statement or display pictures of the company building really don't bode well for keeping the interest of site visitors.
On the other hand, sites that speak directly to potential customers about how they can solve their problems, make their lives easier, safer, richer or more comfortable have a much better chance of keeping their visitors attention.
Concentrate on what your customers want to know, rather than what you want to tell them. In order to find out what your customers need, it is useful to solicit feedback from them. A common way to do this is by monitoring your enquiry emails for common themes, creating a feedback-form on the site, or to add an interactive forum.
As well as addressing all the possible questions about your product or service, it is important to address other, less obvious anxieties. If you are asking for contact details from your prospects, for example if you are asking them to subscribe to an email list, you must include a Privacy Policy. With the growing problem of email spam, many people are afraid to give out personal information. A basic Privacy Policy section will let your visitors know how the information they are providing will be used and if they will be contacted in the future.
Customers are also afraid of what will happen if they are not happy you’re your product or service once purchased. To help alleviate any fears that they might have about purchasing online, there needs to be a section where potential customers can read your policy on accepting returns and refunds. For more information about how to write persuasive and customer focussed sales copy for your web site, have a look at our DIY Internet Marketing Guide “Writing Text That Sells”. For an excerpt visit: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_3.html
11. Inconsistent Look and Feel Many web sites confuse their visitors by having different designs or layouts in different sections. This often happens when a new section is added on to the original web site such as a shopping cart service. Visitors are left wondering if they are visiting another web site, another company, a partner or subsidiary. It can be very confusing.
It also screams of poor planning and can lead to design-drift and branding issues. It may be tempting to stray from the original design; it may be difficult to incorporate the newer sections or you may currently have a better design, but wait till you do a complete next-generation re-design of the entire site before introducing a new look and feel. Don’t leave your visitors scratching their heads with one hand and possibly clicking away with the other.
Finally, any site that employs a number of these 11 notorious features is particularly painful to experience. When I click to a website that has six different fonts and colours, scrolls down never-ending pages, uses flying words and dancing graphics, big unreadable blocks of text, lists no phone number and has irrelevant or outdated content, I scream and bang my head on the desk. Worse than that, I click away from it as fast as I can. Make these mistakes at your peril.
For a positive look at what to include in your web sites design, take a look at September’s issue of this newsletter “12 Essential Design Tips” available here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/internet_marketing_newsletter_.html#September2004.
For a more in-depth, step-by-step guide to avoiding costly mistakes and making your web site work smarter, take a look at our in-depth DIY Internet Marketing Guides: ”Start at the Beginning” and “Writing Text That Sells” available here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/diy_internet_marketing_guides.html
With all of this invaluable information available to you, you shouldn’t go far wrong.
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