The 7 Easiest Ways to Lose Business on the Web

Even the big guys do it. The huge corporations with massive research budgets, who hold focus groups and have en entire team devoted to decoding web site traffic, where they’re going wrong and what is working for them. Even these guys make some of these mistakes. But they are not immune. Whether your business is a small, home-run, one person operation, or a massive, international corporation, if you employ any of the following tactics on your web site, it is 100% guaranteed that you are losing customers.

1. Methods of contact. You’d be surprised how many web sites are out there who still don’t have clear, explicit details on how to get in touch. Beyond that, the majority of web sites out there offer only one or two means of communication. It is fact: people have their own preferred method of contact, be it email, forms, phone or drop-ins. Sometimes they prefer to message you over Facebook, and sometimes, even an @mention on Twitter is how they want to get your attention. Whichever it is, if you’re not offering it, they’re not going to stick around to tell you. They’re just going to leave. It amazes me how many companies out there won’t post their email address as a clickable link. While I totally understand the absolute frustration that comes with immense amounts of spam, you have to ask yourself, “is not getting a lot of spam more important to me than getting those potential customers who have left because they can’t click to send me an email?”. I myself leave web sites on a daily basis if they don’t have a clickable email link.

2. Music. I’ve been working on the web for 10 years and this remains my number one pet peeve. I can’t believe the absolute lack of respect some people show by putting auto-loading music or sounds on their web site. 99.9% of the time I am surfing the web, I am at work and a large number of other web surfers are at work while they browse the internet. If I go to your web site while someone in my office is on the phone, I would be interrupting an extremely important phone call. Even worse, if I am in a meeting or on the phone myself. This happens almost daily, as my clients and I look over other web site for ideas. Other people could get in trouble and will avoid your site at all costs while at work. Is this what you want? Is having some awful music on your web site worth losing a lot of potential customers and clients because they leave your site the second they hear the first note?

3. Entrance pages. Think about it. It’s an extra step people have to take to get to your sales pitch. What logic is there in that? Absolutely none. And in many studies, entrance pages have proven to be the number one cause of lost sales on web sites.

4. Flash sites – beyond the fact that these are not very SEO friendly, which means you have less of a chance to rank well on Google, Yahoo! and Bing, they also demand certain software, they alienate a lot of mobile phones, including the iPhone, and they make the forms within them incapable of being filled out with auto-fill, and a lot of people won’t bother to fill out a form they can’t use auto-fill to fill out. Sites that are entirely in flash are the number one way to make sure you’re losing the most business possible on the web.

5. Unoptimized images – Massive graphics that have not been optimized for the web can make your site slow loading for a lot of users, including the mobile phone users, which is a rapidly growing portion of web users. If your web site takes more than a few seconds to load, unless you’ve posted the cure for cancer, expect no one to wait it out.

6. Physical address – if you haven’t got your physical address posted, you’re probably losing clients. Not because people want to stop-in, but because they feel that a site without a physical address, could be located anywhere and run by anyone. It’s not very transparent and creates an air of distrust on your web site.

7. Lengthy forms - Why, when someone just wants to send you a question about your product or service, would you need their entire mailing address, postal code and all? Do you need 8 different phone numbers for them in this age of voicemail, email an texting? Fax number? Really? Are you going to send them a telegram, too? Here is a general rule to follow when designing your web site: from the moment a visitor loads your front page, each step it takes to get in contact with you is a step guaranteed to lose business. The more you make people fill out in a form, the less likely they will get to the end of that form. So, if you can get away with just their Name, Email and their questions, you’re going to do a lot better than someone asking for their birth date, blood type or level of school completed. Don’t believe me? Check out this jaw-dropping article: The $300 Million Button

When I tell people that one or a few of these things need changing on their web site, I sometimes get the response, “but, everyone tells us how much they love our web site!”. Not true. Only the people who love your web site tell you how much they love it. And I’m sure there are some people who do. However, just because you’re not hearing from anyone that parts of your web site are outdated, inefficient and poorly designed, doesn’t mean it’s not the case. The people who don’t like your web site, will rarely stick around to try and find a way to tell you. I have worked in this industry for 10 years, and been an avid web surfer for much longer, and I personally guarantee that if you practice any of the above points, you are losing customers.

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