Does your website entice visitor to pause and take a few moments to look around or does it confuse them so much they click past it without ever looking back.

The goal of your website is to make visitor stay until desired visitor response has been achieved. That might be that they sign up for your newsletter, complete a survey or make a purchase. If surfer doesn't stay for more than a few moments then all your hard work is for nothing.

There are 8 key factors that can prevent people from staying on your site. In extreme cases key areas below can actually drive traffic away from your site.

Sin #1 Provide Useful Content. People search for information online. To find that information they use search engines. They type in keywords or phrases to locate items, places or information they require or desire. Google, Yahoo and MSN go through their indexes and present searcher with best possible match for their information request. The searcher clicks on links and visits a few sites.

What happens if searcher doesn't find relevant information once they get to site? Yup they go right back to their previous search results and go elsewhere.

Provide useful content. Don't scam search engines. Don't churn out another site made up of copied search engine results. Your website is your business. Treat it like one.

The two key rules for website content are:

1. Make it useful.

2. Make it easy to find on your site

Sin #2 Slow Loading Sites If your site takes any longer than 30 seconds to load then visitor is gone. Theywon't be back either.

Ideally your website should load in 15 seconds or less. Web surfers will not wait around for your fancy graphics or flash demos to load. They'll get bored and move on.

Do not use bitmap graphic files for logos or as part of your site design. They're ugly and take forever to load.

Ensure that every single GIF and JPEG is optimized for faster loading. If you don't understand how to optimize graphic files for your site ask somebody to do it for you. It can cut your site loading time by 50%.

This is because desire starts from our brain and works its way to our senses. But why are other people saying pretty sites mean fewer sales? Is being pretty not enough? Well, that is exactly point that I want to deal with. Many people are scampering their way to own a flashy website. This attitude is in fact an advantage however it must be coupled with a lot of things in order to perfect craft.

A book will turn out to be annoying if reader finds out that it’s not what they expected it to be. A dish will taste blandly if one who eats it doesn’t like its savor. The product with a nice packaging will stay in trash bin if purchaser did not like its content. And arresting website will no longer be visited if found to be useless and lacking.