5 Sure Fire Ways To Send Visitors Away For Good

So your traffic is going through the roof yeah Its all becoming a bit too much Youre getting lots of sales enquiries through your website every day You want to send visitors away from your site for good Just follow these five Sure Fire Ways and your site will be a tumbleweed ghost town in no time.

Way No. 1 - Clog Up Their Internet Connection

Imagine it. Theyre happily surfing around on Google looking for your widget and everythings going smoothly. Your website appears in the first page listings congratulations you must have employed magnet4web or another highly-esteemed website marketing company! and they click through to you. Then their internet connection starts to clog up. It is positively groaning and creaking under the strain of downloading your homepage which has so many images on it takes over 30 seconds to appear. They look at the progress bar at the bottom of their screen. It reads 20%. They look at their watch and then click on the little X at the top right of their screen. Well done - youve just sent away a visitor - for good.

Way No. 2 - I am not a number - I am a free man

Along come some more visitors. They lick their lips in anticipation of viewing your widgets which they are very interested in buying - they have their credit card handy.

They land on your homepage and all is well, at first. "The benefits of choosing Widgets Inc. are as follows..." Your homepage is laden with customer-focused benefits and selling points - excellent. But wait a minute. Whats that at the bottom of the page Its not what I think it is, is it Oh dear, there in black and white is one of the fundamental no-nos in web design that is guaranteed to send the message "This website was built by my dog":

"Welcome - you are visitor number 102"

Regardless of the number and lets face it 80% are either you or your family! you will be sending away people in droves. Well done - your site is becoming less busy by the day. Lets move on to way number three..

Way No. 3 - "Help me buy from you - please..."

Theyre lost. You have built the site around what seems a logical approach but your visitors are lost. Youve given most prominence to testimonials but they just want to send you an email. They click on three, four and sometimes five pages but cant find your phone number or email address anywhere. But its okay - of course they have a spare quarter of an hour to hunt through your website that doesnt have a site map to find your contact details when they already have another window open with your competitors website - complete with email address, phone number, fax number, street address, mobile number, map and GPS coordinates..

Yes - youve guessed it - youre one step closer to that ghost-town..

Way No. 4 - Please Let Me Watch Intro

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

"Click here to enter site"

Strange that - "enter site". Thats 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 the effect of someone regurgitating your business corporate identity over the 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 the 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 the merry-go of visual delights will just make your visitors sick. They will leave your glitzy fairground never to return..

Mike Cheney, www.magnet4web.com ©