Many online small business owners want their site to look as nice as possible and are more than willing to add all the bells and whistles to make it memorable to their customers. While this is a noble approach, it can end up costing you plenty in lost sales. Many of your buyers will find special effects on a web site cute the first time they visit, they will become quite annoyed with them on subsequent visits. Heck, many first time visitors will not be too thrilled with them, either.
Depending on how special effects are used, they can make your site look extremely unprofessional at the worst and simply hard to navigate in the best case scenario. Many of these features will cause pages to crash unless the visitor has the latest version of Java or some sort of plug in. If the site doesn't crash, it could end up taking forever to load. Most who have to wait for a site to load, will click the back button in the blink of an eye. I know that I do.
BARNES AND NOBLE
Let's say you have a flash movie that you think will be an absolutely fantastic thing to put on your home page. Perhaps it provides a great introduction to a product you offer. But what if your visitor doesn't have the latest flash player? You're only going to irritate the visitor because they will either be unhappy they have to visit another site to download an update or that their system doesn't support that type of file. Why do this? You spend plenty to get visitors to your site - don't chase them away by making it difficult for the customer to view your site.
There are 5 bells and whistles that I don't recommend on any site. Keep it simple and you'll find that your conversion rates will skyrocket.
Stay away from these five:
1. Sound files that start up when a visitor arrives at your site
Talk about unprofessional! What if your customers speakers are turned all the way up? You'll be sure to annoy them as you blast them out of their chair and possibly wake up the baby!
2. Javascript functions that load mini windows on the page
Cute, but these can crash your visitors machine!
3. Java functions that load an additional application into the web page
No thanks! This only serves to slow down the load time.
4. Pop Out menus that cover part of the screen with a new window
This can be very confusing for those that aren't web savvy.
5. Animated graphics or huge, fancy graphics
Again, super unprofessional.
Some business owners think that the "cool" factor overrides all of the issues that can be associated with these things. While it may be "cool" for the web designer and web site owner, I can tell you that it's far from being "cool" to the site's visitors.
Not only are many of these things a hassle for your visitors, having a home page that is made up only of Javascript, a video or music can also hurt you when it comes to being found by search engines. Keep it simple and you'll be far better off in many aspects.
Top 5 Bells & Whistles to Stay Away From on Your Website BARNES AND NOBLE
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