Simon Paul Thurston

Well I know this may sound a rather strange title but as I’ve come across some BIG no-no’s recently, I thought that it may be useful to post them on my blog.

The principal problem that I am encountering is that there are businesses that are simply not thinking about what they are doing. Some are having others tell them what to do – the problem is those telling them what to do also have no idea.

The first item I wanted to share with you is the dreaded ‘overly-designed’ website.

You must have come across one; plenty of flash, lots of images, sound effects, ‘click here to enter site’ messages.

BIG, BIG no-no, unless you want to leave money on the table, which I am sure you don’t.

Sure, some of these sites look visually appealing and some of us may find it ‘entertaining’ to have sound affects and other such gimmickry.

If you’re looking for your website to attract, compel and convert visitors in to buyers (Huge hint here – if you’re currently not doing this you really ought to be) then you need to change the way your site looks, feels and operates.

its not as difficult as you may think and the investment could add many thousands to your bottom line, such is the impact what I would call a ‘direct response’ website can have on a business.

Your site should focus on getting your visitor to take some kind of action, either calling you, or using your online cart, or paying you a visit – instead of ‘entertaining’ them with pictures, images, music etc.

So that means that your telephone number should be visible and preferably on every page of your site, along with your address too. do not hide these details away in an “about us” page or a ‘contact us” page, this is a mammoth like mistake.

Actually, as this post is developing in to somewhat of a mammoth, I am going to carry it over to another post, where I’ll go into more detail about what you should be implementing on your website to get maximum results from it.

Speak soon…