I have surfed through quite a number of websites in the past and mere looking at a website I can tell you everything that’s wrong with it! Experience counts. I will share with you some of the things you should avoid putting on a website.

Common mistakes to avoid on your business website

Splash Pages – the Business website should avoid having a splash page on their website and the reason is nobody is coming to your website to see your “splash or welcome” image. Help people save time and amount of data spent visiting your site. Take your users to their needs as soon as they hit your URL. Also, note that splash pages are bad for usability and SEO.

Ads – Ads are only good for a site whose goal is to generate traffic and ad clicks. But maybe cool it with the ads and not have so many. Too many ads will slow down your site and distract your user.

Pop-Ups – Pop-ups are annoying. Unless you have a genuine and compelling reason to use one, try to avoid them. There is nothing more irritating than reading a site content or ready to click on a link or navigation button and just to have a pop-up bounce up and interfere.

Thin Content – This means having a website with very little content on post and pages. It’s not okay to have up to 10 pages that each has about 2-3 sentences on them. Content help drives your search engine placement. It’s why people visit your website through search engine.

Automatically starting video or audio – It makes no sense when I visit a website and the first thing I see a video playing or trying to load. This will make someone hit the ‘back’ button faster than you can imagine. Also, imagine you’re just browsing through a site, and bam, a sound you weren’t expecting! I tell you, It is an intrusion into the user’s experience.

Flash – Flash was cool and fun but guess what? That trend is dead. Most smartphones and browsers can’t open Flash. Apple killed it, I think because Steve Jobs did not like it.

Video Backgrounds – Studies have shown that having a video play in the background is bad for conversions because it will distract the user from their primary purpose when they land on your website.

Forgetting Analytics – If you can’t track or know who is visiting your site, what’s the point? Having an analytics helps you learn from your website performance and allows you to make your website better, generate more traffic and get more conversions.

Have a website that gives your customers what they are looking for and try to always avoid things that can cause a distraction to your users. Your users do not really care about those distracting stuff.