My guide on how to stop losing customers

Copyright © Vincent Murphy
http://www.HomeGrail.com

Throughout the years, I have seen a lot of people all making the same old mistakes when constructing their websites, Here is my guide on how to stop losing customers and how to avoid these online business mistakes that will turn visitors away from your website and cause you to lose profit and popularity.

Avoid at any cost, signs on your website that say “Under construction” . Websites are supposed to be live and ready and they are supposed to change and expand over time. Under Construction signs on your website look cheap and unprofessional, if your site is not ready to show to the public, then please don't show it!

Hit or Visitor Counters.
Someone who visits your site usually doesn't care on how many other people have visited your site but I can bet you that if the visitor counter displays a low number it will be an enormous turn-off for most people. It indicates that your website has low traffic and therefore is not very popular. If you must have a visitor counter then check out statcounter.com They offer a free yet reliable invisible web tracker, highly configurable hit counter and real-time detailed web stats. Insert a simple piece of their code on your web page and you will be able to analyse and monitor all the visitors to your website in real-time from your own statcounter admin area. Also any decent web host should have detailed statistics available.

Too much Technology .
Try to keep your website simple and easy to navigate. There are loads of really cool and crazy items you can program into your website but they are only going to distract the visitor and turn the focus away from your main intentions. Also some of this overuse of technology can slow down the loading time of your page, so drop it in favour of a more simple design. Avoid too many animated graphics, flash shows and other huge graphics, as well as amateurish audio and videos.

Statements of copyright.
Make sure you always include copyright statements on every page, and update the year in the copyright statement as appropriate. If your guests look at your website and finds that the copyright information looks like this; Copyright 1995 it’s a real turn off and it is actually shouting out loud that your website has not been updated for years! As I wrote above websites are supposed to be live and ready and if it has not been updated since 1995 it probably means that your going out of business.

Extra long sentences can finish off your website. Don't forget; customers get easily distracted. Help your guests by keeping your sentences short and to the point.

Studies have revealed that most people will not read extra long pages of text right off their computer monitor. I have seen sales pages reaching over 15 printed pages and you have to be a rather enduring person if you care to read through all that off your pc screen.

Visitors will either print your page or they will scan it for bullet points. Make sure you keep your pages as short as possible without compromising your content. If you have a lot of content that basically needs to be on one page, then make short pages with a “next” button at the end instead so people can read more by turning to the next page. This method can even give you some extra money as well as you can put AdSense boxes to each of these pages.

It helps if you actually tell your visitors what to do – in the marketing world it's called a “Call To Action.” neglecting this may result in a customer leaving before they have bought anything. If you tell your visitors what to do next it is much more likely that you will see greater results. Examples of this are: , Sign up to our newsletter, Click on the link below, Call Us, and Order today!

Once you have built your website and everything looks pleasing to the eye, don't think you can now put your feet up and wait for the traffic and customers to arrive from nowhere! Actually once you have built your website the hard part begins. You will have to market your website consistently in order to obtain traffic. There is no use in spending lots of time and money on creating your website if you fail to market it.

Draw up a marketing Plan, the plan should indicate the marketing goals and objectives to be achieved over a specific time period and then lays out the various strategies to be followed in achieving them.

Vincent Murphy is the Webmaster/Owner of http://www.HomeGrail.com

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