Whenever I’m surfing the internet, even when I’m searching for specific information, the website creator and marketer part of me can rarely resist sweeping a professional eye over the sites I visit. Some of the things I find make me cringe…
There was a time when I’d write notes to webmasters pointing things out and occasionally I still do. But not very often. The advice is seldom well taken and it’s not my duty to “edit” the web. 🙂
But, just in case you have a site, and just in case you’re interested in knowing what kinds of things really stand out and make a bad impression, here are a few of the most common problems.
Typos, misspellings and bad grammar. Everyone makes mistakes and having one or two go unnoticed is understandable. But just because you’re not the greatest English student around is no excuse for your site to be riddled with errors. Even if you don’t hire an editor or copywriter, how hard is it to have a couple of friends or co-workers give it a read through and point out any problems?
Broken links – when you click but don’t go anywhere. Or worse, when you click and get an error message claiming the page doesn’t exist. This is so simple to fix that it seems sloppy and negligent, especially when they stay broken for weeks or months. (Check your links regularly – there’s even a program that will keep an eye on your links and let you know when one is broken.)
Links that aren’t links – when the address is typed out, but not made into a clickable link. Of course sometimes there’s a good reason for this, such as when the link is an email address. Other times it’s just obvious that the site owner simply didn’t know what they were doing.
Sites that have no focus. Cluttered, disorganized, poorly written sites only make the visitor feel confused. And confused visitors don’t stay and they don’t become customers.
If you find these or other problems on your site and need help sprucing up, contact me.