Your site is invisible to search engines.   Some otherwise well-designed sites use an introductory page which contains nothing but a Flash animation. If the page has no text and no keywords beyond the title "Welcome to (Our Site)!", there is nothing for a search engine to find. Google will never know you exist — and neither will your customers.

Your site takes forever to load.   Approximately 40% of US internet users are still on dial-up and the percentage is higher in other countries. Studies have shown that if your front page takes longer than about 5 seconds to load completely, most users will hit the Back button and go somewhere else.

Your site requires a particular browser for it to look or work right.   Internet Explorer was once the only game in town, but no longer. Microsoft ended support for Mac users at the end of 2005, and usage of alternative browsers (Safari and Firefox in particular) is steadily rising due to continuing security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. If your site doesn't accommodate these users, you are locking the door to your site for 25% to 40% of your potential customers.

Screen capture of actual website
(URL withheld to protect the guilty)

Your site requires the visitor to download plugins in order for it to work.   It's one thing if you have an added video or audio feature that requires Flash or RealPlayer. Just be sure to label it clearly and have a link for your visitor to download the plugin if they choose to listen or view. But if your entire site depends on the visitor downloading a plugin or updating the one they have, they'll see this on your home page and hit the back button immediately.

You require visitors to register before they can access your site. One well-known author of marketing how-tos scatters little teaser sidebars throughout his books with a note to go to his website for additional tips and information. Once you get there, you find that he requires your name and email address before you can get that information you came for — and that you're automatically signed up for a very hard-sell newsletter if you do.

A related mistake is to require customers to register and create an account before your shopping cart will give them basic information such as shipping costs. Your software should, before it asks a customer to register or log in, ask for the ZIP code or destination country, calculate and present shipping, and give them the option to choose whether or not to continue with the purchase.       Next »

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