Sidestep Website Pitfalls – Part 1

February 6th, 2009

by Tina Hutzelman

Your built your website so now you need visitors.

While most companies have websites, few have the number of qualified visitors they’d hoped for. And with websites, there’s a big difference between “visitors” and “qualified visitors.”

“Visitors” can be anyone who comes to your site – prospective customers, those who got there accidentally, your competition, your mother. “Qualified visitors” are a unique sub-set of visitors. These people intentionally search for the type of company you are and visit because you look like what they seek.

So how do you increase your ratio of qualified visitors to those just passing through? A good place to start is by avoiding some common website pitfalls. Today and for the next three weeks, we’re going to address some of the most common pitfalls.

Pitfall #1 – Your Site is Not Easy to Find

If the only way people get to your site is by knowing the exact URL, it’s too hard to find. So be searchable – especially on Google, the most commonly used search engine today.

Google has a great resource for developers on their website. Keep updated by visiting their Webmaster Guideline page.

Studies show many people only look at the first 10 sites in a search list. If you’re in the top ten for all search terms associated with your site, you’re doing well. Remember however, to continually check your ranking. Just because you are in the top 10 today, does not mean you’ll be there next week.

If you check your site and discover that you’re near the bottom of the list, or worse yet, you don’t show up at all, you need to work on Search Engine Optimization.

This set of techniques improves how websites are ranked in search lists. It includes coding with metatags, optimizing pages for specific key words, and verifying that the content supports the identified key words.

Search Engine Optimization is a double-edged sword. If you do it well and your competitors don’t, you have an advantage. If they do it well and you don’t, then the advantage is theirs.

Pitfall #2 – Your Site is Slow to Load

We live in a world of short attention spans. Translated for the web – pages should load within 8 to 10 seconds. Researchers speculate that billions of dollars are lost each year to people bailing out of slow-loading websites.

Your first step in avoiding this pitfall is to take a (hopefully) quick self assessment. Find a computer with a dial-up connection. Clear the cache on the browser and connect to your website. In how many seconds did your home page load? Now test the other pages.

If your times aren’t so good, note which pages are slow then look for causes. A few of the most common are:

  • Extensive animations
  • Numerous audio or video elements
  • Large graphical elements
  • Technical difficulties at your ISP

In our next post, we’ll address navigation issues and the use of Flash.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 9:43 am and is filed under Website Pitfalls & How to Avoid Them. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

21 Responses to “Sidestep Website Pitfalls – Part 1”


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