Many of you want your site to look as nice as possible and are more than willing to add all the bells and whistles to make it stand out to your customer base. 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 website cute the first time they visit, but often become quite annoyed with them on subsequent visites.
Depending on how special effects are used on your site, they can make it look unprofessional at worst and extremely hard to navigate in the best case scenario. Many of the “cool” features will cause pages to crash unless the visitor has the latest version of Java or some sort of plug in. Even if the site doesn’t necessarily crash, it could end up taking forever to load. And we all know that most customers who have to wait for a site to load, will click the back button in the blink of an eye. I certainly do.
You might have created a flash movie that you believe will be an absolutely fantastic value-add on your homepage. Perhaps its a great introduction to a product you offer. Think about this. What if your visitor doesn’t have the latest flash player? You’re only going ot 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 put your site in this position? you spend plenty to get visitors to your site; don’t chase them away by making it difficult for them to view your site.
There are 5 bells and whistles I wouldn’t recommend for any site. Keep it simple and you’ll find that your conversion rates will skyrocket.
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!
2. jAVASCRIPT FUNCTIONS THAT LOAD MINI-WINDOWS ON A PAGE
Cute and often intriguing, they can crash your visitors’ computers.
3. jAVA FUNCTIONS THAT LOAD AN ADDITIONAL APPLICATION INTO THE WEB PAGE
This seems to only serve 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 and cumbersome for those that aren’t that tech savvy.
5. ANIMATED GRAPHICS OR LARGE GRAPHICS
Again, just unnecessary. Keep it simple.
Some of you may think that the “cool” factor overrides all of the issues that can be associated with these things. It may be “cool” for your web designer and website owner, but it’s far from “cool” to your visitors. not only are many of these things a hassle for your visitors, having a homepage tha tis made up of only Javascript, a video or music can also hurt your business when it comes to being found by search engines. Keep things simple and you’ll be far better off in many aspects.