10 ways to kill your website and waste your thousands of dollars

A lively website can be a powerful lead generation tool that can capture the interest of prospective customers but only if you adopt good website practice. Unfortunately, far too many website owners seem to adopt one or more of the following really dumb ways to operate, promote and design a website. How many of them are you guilty of?

1. Gave it to a relative to do - Just because a nephew is good at video games it doesn’t mean he can create you a wonderful website. It amazes me that people fall for this. Once they’ve asked them to do it they are trapped. If he doesn’t deliver then the risk of family rifts put so much extra pressure to accept what is finally given.

2. You don’t test your website - When you create content, squeeze pages, autoresponder signups and surveys for your site do you test them out? Are there any dead links or do you test them all? If you don’t test everything then you’re leaving your customers to do it for you. They will be far from impressed.

3. Visitors come and go and never return - If you manage to get some real people visiting your site and you do nothing to capture them then they will come and then they will go and you’ll never know why. Failing to capture them will destroy your sales. Capturing them can mean getting them to leave their email address or capturing their interest so that they return.

4. Dabbling - We all get offers in emails right and while most are ignored we get tempted occasionally. So we buy into the latest scheme and give it a go. Then we get tempted by the next one. The result is that we dabble here and there and get nowhere.

5. Repeat past mistakes - It is human nature to assume that if something didn’t work then it is your fault. In the worst examples, this can lead people to be conned again and again. You buy traffic, it didn’t work so you complain. If they’re clever crooks they’ll say hey was your website ready for the traffic or did you buy enough and you foolishly but inevitably place another order.

6. Automated spamming advertising - If you really want to spam then you can automate the whole process by buying software solutions that automate the spamming process for you. They don’t tell you that this is what you’ll be doing but it’s the reality of their “instant traffic” program. Don’t do it. It will get you into a heap of trouble.

7. Throw money at Adwords - Setting up Adwords campaigns can be deceptively easy. It’s easy to get going to start displaying adverts and driving traffic to your website the very same day. The really hard bit is to do it profitably. This is to pay less on Adwords that you then make in sales. If you don’t take the time and effort to monitor and test your campaigns then you could end up losing a lot of money as many have found out to their cost.

8. Do you concentrate on style over substance? - Have you been sold on a choice of pretty templates or been mesmerised by graphical tricks that are the latest in website design? If so, then you fallen for the style over substance con. You have a pretty site but it is also pretty useless and does nothing to get visitors it may attract to stay or come back.

9. Don’t update website content - When was the last time that you updated your website with new fresh copy? If the answer is months or years ago then you are presenting a very bad image to your potential customers. It’s like one of those shop or store windows that are dusty and uncared for with goods going stale and cobwebs all over them. That’s not going to attract your customers in to buy is it?

10. Your site has no content - Your website has no content beyond the traditional pages of home, your products, about you, contact you. How would you view such a website? Yes, you’d look for a second, close the window and will have forgotten all about it within a few minutes. Is this what you want to happen with visitors to your site?

It is not too late to put these dumb and destructive ways behind you and get on the route to website success. Stop reacting in a panic and instead become committed to your online success.