Why You Will Fail Part 1
In the seventh of our series of informative articles on the honest way to earn an income online, we look at some of the reasons internet marketers fail.
In the last article, we looked at domain names and web hosting and the dos and don'ts of these topics. Choosing the right domain name for your business and using a professional web hosting company will give your business a better chance of success than using a free hosting company and leaving your hard earned visitors confused by an array of baffling ads and banners that are nothing to do with your business. In this article, we'll look at some other things that will harm your business and potentially cause it to fail.
Now that you have got your professional looking site up and running and you have a decent hosting company, you are advertising all over the internet in the hope of attracting visitors to your site. There are some things that you should avoid doing with your site like the plague if you don't want to turn your visitors away in their droves.
The first of these is pop-up windows. You've seen enough sites doing it and probably thought it would be really cool to try it yourself.
Don't.
Pop-ups are annoying. They will annoy visitors to your site who will just as quickly reach for the mouse and click the "close" button so fast it'll make your head spin. Pop-unders are just as annoying, but have a different effect on your visitors in that they have probably already looked at your site before they have been assaulted by the dreaded pop-under. The negative effect of that is they simply won't return to your site. Ever again.
What's the downside of that? Well, in internet marketing, it is a statistical fact that it takes a potential customer on average seven visits to a website before they buy. So you want your visitors to return. So don't drive them away with pop-ups and pop unders.
Another annoyance that could cause your visitors to close their browser window without hesitation is a slow loading flash presentation. You might think your fancy and probably expensive new flash intro is the best thing since sliced bread, but the potential customer might not be so impressed when he or she has to go and make a cup of coffee while waiting for the page to load up.
Don't assume everybody has a fast internet connection either. There are still plenty of consumers out there with dial-up connections, clutching their credit cards wanting to buy your affiliate product. Guess what they'll do if they have to sit there waiting for the page to load? They'll click on the next website in the list and buy their affiliate product instead, that's what. So think very carefully about using flash - save your time and money and invest in some nice static graphics to make your homepage stand out and keep your visitors and their credit cards to yourself.
Another turn off for would-be customers is a homepage full of junk. I mean hundreds of banner ads, links to a plethora of affiliate products all over the place, flashing buttons saying things like "You are the 10,000th visitor PRESS HERE for your prize", swirling animated gifs and the like.
In order to keep your hard won visitor on your homepage, keep it simple. Have separate pages for affiliate links, products, offers etc and only promote one or two things on your homepage's main area and use a sidebar for a few other important links or offers. Visitors will stay with your site if they like the ease of navigation and simple layout and are not bombarded with flashing or swirling animated graphics. If your content is good, well written and helpful, they will come back, time after time - and guess what? They are more likely to buy something from you.
One last thing you should be aware of is unwanted noise. There are plenty of websites out there that you click onto and then a terribly echoing, horrible nasal voice starts yakking at you about the benefits of their great product and you search frantically for the "STOP" button but can't find it. Don't be one of them or that visitor will just close your window and you lose a potential sale. Similarly, when you are surfing at 3am you don't want to hear a bad 1980's synth record blaring out at 120 decibels. So do yourself a favour and avoid using sound on your site. It scares more people away than it attracts and you want your business to succeed not fail.
After having said all that, if you have a pop-up and pop-under free site, free of slow loading flash presentations and a clutter-free homepage with good, clear navigation links to the rest of your site and no music or jabbering salesman, you might stand a chance at keeping your visitors' interest enough to make them want to return often enough. When they do return and find plenty of new, well written and interesting content they will begin to trust you enough to buy something from you. Which at the end of the day, can mean the difference between failure and success.
In our next article, we'll look at some more mistakes you can make that will cause you're online business to fail.
NEXT ARTICLE #8 >> Why You Will Fail Part 2