14 Web Crimes you may be committing

| Web design

14 Web Crimes you may be committing

There are hundreds of millions of websites on the internet. Whilst surfing you may encounter some beautiful websites, but it is more than likely that you will come across websites that are slow, ugly and/or simply just annoying.

I thought it would be good to identify what functions, appearances and traits that really annoy users on the web and may be faulting your website overall.  

How many of these atrocities are you committing?

Website Crimes

1. Over doing flash

We know you want a pretty, cool website that is unique from everyone else’s but a lot of flash isn’t necessarily the answer.

People don’t like slow websites, if you are unsure what a slow website is, if you have to wait more than a couple of seconds for any page to load - your website is slow.

Speed has also become a bigger factor in Google’s algorithm, slow website are dramatically ranked down.

2. Not having a mobile friendly website

3.7 billion people actively use 4.3 billion mobile phones. Not having a functional, clear and appealing mobile website could cost you a lot of potential customers.

Within the Estate Agency industry, mobile apps are also become more of an essential part of marketing campaigns due to the huge amounts of potential customers it draws in.

3. Outdated website

The web changes fast and though you don’t have to update your website every year, you do have to update it every now and again.

If your website hasn’t been updated in a few years yet you are unsure if it really needs to be update why not find out how outdated your site is with a free web review.

4. Confusing customers with your website

If you have to think about how to use your website it’s not user friendly. People don’t want to think about how to find things on your website.

Make it simple and clear.

5. Sacrificing functionality for the cool factor

Lots of people think a website is all about the design and making it look cool rather than creating a website that a customer can use comfortably.

If the site is beautiful yet your users can’t find what they want, a redesign may be in order or customers may be lost.

6. Auto-play videos

This is a massive deterrent from a website. Users should have full controls of videos and sounds on your website. There’s nothing more annoying than when you go on a website and you are greeted with annoying welcome messages.

You may think this is cool and unique but it’s really not. 

7. New Tabs or browser windows open within the same site

If I click on a link to your ‘about us’ or ‘services’ page I don’t need new tabs or browsers to open to view the same website I was just on. The only time this is acceptable is if the link is taking you to a separate website.

8. Not having an ‘about us’ page or having a misleading one

The ‘about us’ page is simply there as more of a trust factor. It gives the user a little bit of insight into your business. Users want to know who you are, where you are, who works for you and how long have you been established.

These four points are crucial and also allows the customer to recognise you and trust you. Websites without this page may be seen as possible spam or a ‘dodgy’ website. 

SEO Crimes

9. Not recording your marketing campaigns

All the hard work you are putting into writing articles and getting interactive on social networking sites might be going all to waste if you aren’t following the results.

If you don’t know the results how can you tell what’s working, you may be wasting your time optimising for the wrong phrases and not giving enough attention to other aspects.

10. Not spending a reasonable amount of your marketing budget on new online campaigns

You’ve probably got yourself into the routine of spending your budget on Adwords and directories which isn’t necessarily a bad thing if it’s working for you but the potential of new customers you are missing out on is huge.

Everything changes and online everything changes even faster, new ways of finding customers are created all the time.

11. Your SEO strategy is just buying links

Everyone likes to cut corners and buying links is the easy way to get around doing any hard work for SEO. The problem with this is search engines are becoming a lot smarter and can tell the difference between links earned the right way and links that have been bought.

Bought links can lead to websites being removed from Google all together.

12. Not having a useful, interesting blog

Blogs (if used correctly) can be very powerful tools which will draw in a lot of traffic as well as cause talk around the net.

This can lead to people linking to your website, which will improve your websites rankings and trust.

Social Crimes

13. “Shouting” constantly on Twitter and Facebook

You see this all the time, obviously site owners hear of the wonders of social media and want a piece of it. The problem, they don’t understand how to get the full benefit from social sites or they don’t want to spend the time on making a name for themselves.

If you only ‘Shout’ about your press releases, post properties that are on the market or simply just self promote, your followers will just get bored and leave. If you can’t initiate conversations and get involved with other users than you might as well just close your account.

14. Rarely used blogs, Twitter and Facebook accounts.

This is something you see all the time too. The web owner has heard using a blog can boost your ranks, will post one blog post, forget about it and post another six months later. Even if it’s a great blog post it won’t benefit you.

The same goes for Twitter and Facebook, if you only post one post every other week people will forget you exist and may even un-follow you.

With all this you should be able to identify the faults of your website and online marketing campaigns and put them back into working order.

By Luke Stanley
SEO Consultant