17 Website Design Mistakes That Kill Your Sales - Part two

By Ben Hart

I have assembled here a checklist of 17 mistakes to avoid when designing your website if your primary goal is to make money with your website.

 

Mistake #9 – Frames

 

Don’t use frames in your website.  Search engines don’t like them. They also increase the time it takes for your site to load.  Pages using frames often can’t be printed. Not all browsers support frames – especially the older versions of browsers.  If you reader likes an article they read in a frame, they often can’t book mark it.

 

Mistake #10 – “Mystery Meat” Navigation

 

This term, I believe, was coined by Vincent Flanders who runs a good site on website design provocatively called www.webpagesthatsuck.com.

The term “mystery meat” refers to processed meat (i.e. hotdogs, baloney and school cafeteria meat) where you have no idea what’s really in the meat.  Flanders is referring to navigation buttons on websites that don’t tell you where they will take you. 

Mystery meat is also produced by links that don’t explain what they are until your mouse rolls over them.  Website designers love these rollover links because they look cool.  But they create frustration for the site visitor.  Make it easy for visitors to know instantly what your site is about and where the link s will take them.

Imagine if you could not read a road sign until you got out of your car and kicked it.  Then the instruction would flash into view. Navigation links should be like road signs, telling your reader exactly what will happen if she clicks on the link.

 

Mistake #11 – Navigation Buttons in Odd Locations

 

This is another favorite trick of site designers trying to show how artsy they are.  They put navigation buttons in strange locations – behind balloons, floating around in the air, or sideways so you have to twist your head to read them. 

 

This is like putting the Table of Contents somewhere in the middle of the book or maybe inside the dust jacket instead of at the front of the book where you expect to find the Table of Contents.  Put the main site navigation buttons where you’d expect to find them – either along the top of the page (preferred) or down the left side of the page. 

 

Mistake #12 – Confusing Navigation Structure

 

Don’t require your visitor to have to figure out how to get around your site, like a puzzle to be solved.  Have a simple, clear navigation structure.

It’s frustrating for visitors not to easily be able to find what they are looking for on your site, or to know exactly where they are going when they hit a link.  The visitor then gets lost in your site and can’t figure out how to get back to the original starting point.  Imagine if a grocery store had no rhyme or reason to how it organized its products – just put products on the shelves randomly.  Lots of sites are organized like that. Actually, it’s lack of organization. 

Too many links on your home page also creates a “mystery meat” effect by confusing your visitor.  Have no more than eight buttons on the index of your home page. Fewer than eight is better.

 

Mistake #13 - Music

Unless you are a band selling a song, having music start playing automatically when your visitor reaches your home page is a very bad idea.  It’s cheesy and screams “high school. A kid must have designed this site.”  Plus people have their own tastes in music – most of them different than yours. Having music play on the home page of your site might be just about the fastest way to cause the majority of your visitors to hit the exit button as fast as they can.

 

Mistake #14 – “This site requires [browser name] version x or higher.”

 

Imagine if you have a TV that’s not configured for High Definition and every channel you turned to required High Definition TVs.  I don’t watch much TV, so that’s what my TV is like.  Don’t require your visitors to have the latest, greatest, most up-to-date browser.  Your site should be designed for your low-tech visitors.  Not everyone keeps up to speed with the latest. 

 

As I write these words, nearly half of America still uses dial-up for the Internet connection.  Not everyone lives on the Internet.  They use the Internet to send and read email, check sports scores and do a little research sometimes.  Make your site accessible to them.

 

Mistake #15 – Too much Java Script

 

About 10 percent of people do not enable Java Script on their computers.  So you should design your website so that it can be read and enjoyed by these people.

 

Now, you might need some Java Script on your site for sign-up forms and other interactive features. But use Java Script sparingly.  Search engines don’t like to see too much Java Script. 

 

Java Script is sometimes used by crooks to hijack information in browsers and other dastardly purposes. Java script is also used for pop-up ads, to change the appearance of scroll bars, to create rollover navigation (“mystery meat” navigation) and other annoyances. JavaScript is a very powerful tool.  Judicious use of it can enhance the appearance and usability of your site. Use it poorly and you’ll annoy your visitors and the search engines.  If you are running a Google AdWords campaign, a Java Script pop-up ad on your site can cause Google to disable your Google ad  campaign.

 

Mistake #16 - Absolute Font Sizes

 

Do not set your font sizes with absolute values (i.e. 12pt, 15px, etc). Instead, use the relative sizing that HTML supports: +1, -1, etc. or small, x-small, etc. in CSS. Doing this will allow the user to increase or decrease the size at which the text appears in their browser. Users who have poor vision or high-resolution screens will thank you for it.

 

Mistake #17 – Making it too difficult to buy

 

Make it as easy to buy from you as possible.  Sites often require too much information from the buyer.  And filling out the order form is a multi-click process.  The first page you provide your name and email address.  The next page you provide your address.  The next page you provide your credit card information.  The process takes too danged long.  There’s too much friction.

 

Half the people who are trying to buy abandon the process half way through.  It’s just too danged difficult.  People shop on the Internet primarily because it’s convenient.

 

Always strive to reduce friction to buying.  Amazon’s one-click purchase system is one of the best at this.  Amazon founder Jeff Bezos says the one-click purchase system Amazon pioneered is one of the secrets to Amazon’s success. Make buying super-easy and super-simple.

 

You can also choose various levels of credit card verification.  You can require an exact match of your buyers name, address and phone number, a CVS number, plus throw in another verification code or two.  Or you can require just credit card number and expiration date.  That’s all I require – a credit card number and an expiration date.

 

Because I choose the lowest level of verification (just card number and verification date) I pay a higher transaction fee (about 1.5% higher) than if I required all the other possible verification steps.  But I cut way down on my shopping cart abandonment rate.  I get more sales.  I have yet to have anyone claim fraudulent use of their credit card.  My gut tells me all the panic over identify theft is overblown — just like the Y2K scare never materialized, and most other scare mongering. 

 

Now, I realize my sites are pretty ugly.  They are not going to win any “design awards” — which go to the prettiest sites.  I’m no graphic artist.  But my sites do generate $87,000 in sales per month for me.  So they do a good job of selling.

 

Still . . . as I review my list of 17 mistakes, I see indeed that my sites have some of these problems.  I can see that I need to retool.  Mostly I need to simplify.  Always strive to simplify your site.

 www.MarketingRocketFuel.com