03. Your visitors get confused by too many links on your home- page

04. Incoming e-mails are answered after more than 3 days

05. Links cannot be recognized as being links

06. Letting visitor guess what comes next if they click on a link (Text like: ...more or ...next page)

07. Hiding your links within text so that they only can be found by placing mouse over it ( it becomes a hand...)

08. Using more than 6 different colours for your basic design

09. Visitors have to guess which submenu they are in

10. Many spelling errors in your body copy

11. Nothing for FREE on your site

12. Forced registration on your first page or no content available...

13. Your page takes 2 or 3 minutes to load ... most people will interrupt it

14. Using wrong fonts (fonts which are installed on YOUR computer only)

15. Showing same picture but name them differently. By doing this, it cannot be taken from your browser cache to speed up loading time of your page

16. No cross-browser test; your site looks excellent on Internet Explorer but...

17. Scaling your graphics only by width and height attributes of your HTML-code instead of making your graphics smaller/bigger

18. Headlines as gifs instead of text; search engines will ignore them and your loading time will increase

19. Using dozens of blinking elements and marquee-fonts on your pages

20. No unique content, just rehashed material from other web- sites

21 "Ugly" pages; colours which don't fit together, backgrounds which make your text very hard to read

22. Pages which have no "exit", no links which lead you back to your starting page

23. Choosing a hard to remember name for your website, you want to be found, don't you ?

24. Wrong prices for your articles

25. Choosing slow ISP's

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+ Forgetting to have fun! Don't take everything too serious ;-)

As with global navigation, all spotlighted links should also be above fold. This point might seem obvious, but I've seen quite a few sites recently that almost hide important links. They are buried too far down in site.

One site in particular placed two most important links at bottom of page, completely out of site. Big mistake: visitors just won't see them.

Although navigation usually shouldn't be primary focus of your page (that honor belongs to content), it should be given a prime position.

3. Contextual navigation.

Contextual navigation refers to links that give more info about something specific visitor is trying to do.

On every page of your site, you'll have to anticipate questions a visitor is going to have. Figure out what kind of additional information they might need. Then provide links to that information at precise place that they will have question.

One good rule is that any time you refer to information on another page of your site or on a third party's site, link directly to that info. Don't make them hunt and peck trying to find it for themselves. Make it readily available.

4. Bottom-of-the-page navigation.

Whenever visitor gets to end of a page, they are left hanging. They have finished whatever it is they were working on, and now they need somewhere else to go.

This is a critical moment, because it is terribly easy for a visitor to leave if you don't give them somewhere to go. It is your responsibility to point them in right direction.

Never, never, never leave visitors without suggestions at bottom of a page.

If possible, you should try to decide on 1-3 places that visitor is most likely to want to go next. Think about your most important goals for them. Then guide them in that direction.

Always make sure there is at least one link at bottom of a page.

You must make it easy for visitors to do what you want them to do. Always ask yourself...

Where are my visitors going to need a link and how can I make that link really obvious to them?

There are 605.6 million people online. Can they find your business? Jamie Kiley creates powerful and engaging websites that make sure YOUR company gets noticed. Visit www.kianta.com for a free quote.