Yes - you've guessed it - you're one step closer to that ghost-town..

Way No. 4 - 'Please Let Me Watch Intro'

Yes, admit it - you once thought best thing on planet was a website that started up by having a revolving animation of company logo that exploded, span round a bit to an 80s sounding techno tune and then re-constituted itself in centre of screen with immortal words:

"Click here to enter site"

Strange that - "enter site". That's what all your visitors were trying to do when they typed in your web address or clicked on your link but instead they were faced with Jean Michelle Jarre and some possessed bit of code that replicated effect of someone regurgitating your business' corporate identity over screen. Nice. Flash intro = trash intro. Use em (the intros) and lose em (the visitors).

Way No. 5 -"I am five years' old - I like things that flash"

One day in future a law will be passed that will make it illegal to use scrolling text, flashing images, rotating heads, animated animals and boucning cursors on a website. Your website is here to do business. It is supposed to be a serious tool in your marketing armoury. It should be used to convey useful information to your visitors and convince them that you are worth doing business with. Dress it up with flashing icons, swirling graphics, flashing logos and spinning pictures and merry-go of visual delights will just make your visitors sick. They will leave your glitzy fairground never to return..

Michael Cheney, magnet4web.com (c)

Michael Cheney is the Author of The Website Marketing BibleTM:

"High five Michael! Your bible is superb! The world needs to read it and learn from it." - Jay Conrad Levinson, Author of "Guerrilla Marketing"

There is nothing more frustrating than hunting around for something and wasting time when just a simple one pager that presents a summary of all information on your website could be used. A Site Map should be reachable from all pages of your website in just one click and should have clickable links on it so that a visitor can zoom straight through to their desired location without having to hunt around. If you don’t give them a map your visitors may become frustrated searching around for that desired piece of information and they may leave your website never to return.

3. Don’t Make Your Visitors Have To Write An Email To Contact You

If you are inviting enquiries or contact from visitors to your website you need to provide them with a way of doing this that is as easy as possible for them. Just posting your email address on website is not best solution. Why? Because when they click on it they need to then create an email from scratch. Do you know how busy your visitors are? They hardly have time to read content of your homepage – never mind create an email from scratch. The solution? You need to use a simple form. A form enables you to standardise responses that you receive and it also makes it very simple for your visitors to get in touch with you – all they need to do is pop in their name, email address and tick a few boxes and that’s it.

Making it easy for your visitors to contact you isn’t only reason that using a form is a great idea. Doing so means you can get some information back from each person that fills in form. You can ask them how they discovered your website, which other websites they like to visit – you can ask them anything! Anything that is going to help you learn more about them, more about who they are and more about what will make them buy from you. You think they would tell you all this if they were creating an email from scratch? No – of course they wouldn’t! That’s why you need a form.

Michael Cheney is the Author of The Website Marketing BibleTM:

"High five Michael! Your bible is superb! The world needs to read it and learn from it." - Jay Conrad Levinson, Author of "Guerrilla Marketing"