Whatever You Do, Don’t Visit Our Site
It is amazing how site owners and site visitors differ on how they judge the quality of a site. Without fail many site owners have a much higher opinion of the design of their site than the poor folks who have to visit it. As a site owner, you may think your site is saying “welcome, come on in,” when in fact it may be saying, “whatever you do, don’t visit our site.”
With hundreds of thousands of sites vying for visitor attention, its absolutely crucial that you remove any barriers to keep potential customers from bouncing. At most, your window of engagement with a potential customer is only a few seconds. You have to make those precious seconds count!
Listed below are 5 common mistakes that small business owners make that will definitely blow any opportunity for visitor engagement:
1. Choosing a complicated URL – A url is your website’s address. The simpler and clearer it is the higher probability that someone will visit your site. Don’t challenge a visitor to a typing contest to enter your url. If you need help choosing a url try using a free domain naming service like namestation.
2. Choosing a url that has absolutely nothing to do with your site content – Nothing is more irritating than to type in a url like www.carrepair.com and it take you to a site about home decorating. Also avoid using shadow urls and be careful about using deceptive url redirects.
3. Overloading your home page with too many images or too much text – When someone comes to your site, they need to be able to have a clear attractive place where their eyes can focus. Too many images interrupt the ability of the eyes to focus. Too much text distracts the eyes away from the brand or messages that you need them to see. Remember that in such cases less is definitely more.
4. Having a background color that makes your text hard to read – If a visitor has to strain or squint to understand your text you have lost them. Black text on a light colored background is always a safe bet. Also be sure to bold certain keywords and phrases that pertain to your product or service. This enables visitors to quickly scan the page to understand what you are offering.
5. Not having a well crafted call to action – Without a well crafted call to action, your site is nothing more than a pretty digital business card. You need to craft an offer and then put a clear, attractive call to action of that offer in a prominent place on your site. Sometimes it may even be helpful to have more than one call to action on the same page.
These are just a few tips that can transform your site from projecting a stop sign to projecting a green light. If you would like to talk with one of us here at iMi about how we can help your site generate leads, fill out the form in the right hand column of this page.
Free SEO Myths Slideshow
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, is a field that is riddled with myths and half-truths. Before you hire an SEO professional, you owe it to your budget to view this free interactive presentation!
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