7 ways to turn customers off

There are seven ways in which your website can scare off potential customers, according to Nick James. Check this list to see if your website is helping or hurting your business. 

Webmasters work hard to attract visitors to their sites, yet many still make the mistake of presenting their web pages in a way sure to send most visitors heading for the 'emergency exit' (The back button).

It takes just Seven Seconds

Studies have shown that most web visitors make 'snap judgements' on the value of a web page based on the first impression the page gives. It usually takes less than seven seconds for the visitor to decide to stay or leave - based on the initial first impression given by the page. If after the first seven seconds the visitor stays on the page, they continue to look for 'clues' or 'reasons' to leave a web page and go elsewhere.

Visitors decisions to stay or go are almost always based on the perception of trust (or lack of it) conveyed by the web page. The more trustworthy the information appears, the more likely the visitor will stay. Conversely, the less trustworthy the information appears, the quicker the visitor will decide to leave.

A prime goal of any web page is to convey the image of being 'trustworthy'. If you can do that, visitors to your site will stay around a little longer - perhaps even long enough to become a customer...

Here are seven 'trust busting' mistakes that can cause visitors to distrust and leave your web pages.

Seven Trust Busting Mistakes

1. Broken page - If when your web page is opened, images don't appear correctly, or an error message appears, or the page layout is 'broken', visitors immediately will have a negative impression. Their feeling, "if the owner of this site doesn't care enough to fix the obvious problems, why should I stay here?"

2. 'In your face' popup ads - If before the page even loads, a visitor is forced to read an obnoxious 'popup ad', the visitor will get another negative impression about the site. The visitor thinks, 'Even before I get in the door, they are trying to sell me something . . .".

If you must use pop up ads, use them when the visitor exits, not when they enter your site.

3. Forced downloads - When visiting your web page, your visitor doesn't want to be presented with a screen requiring them to load a plugin before they can view your page. This happens when you incorporate some forms of flash or other special scripting into your page. In most cases, adding these features does nothing to enhance trust, and often causes virus conscious visitors -- who don't want to load anything to their computer -- to leave your page forever.

4. Slow loading pages or images - Most internet users are in a hurry. They have places to go, pages to see. And if your page takes more than few seconds to load, many will not wait around. Most have found your page via a search engine, and they have plenty of other pages on the search results they can look at - and if your page doesn't load quickly, they won't wait around.

5. Long blocks of text - Most visitors on the internet are turned off by long blocks of text on any single web page.
Visitors don't want to be forced to read a novel to find out what your page is about. When encountered with long blocks of text, visitors will say, "Forget this. I've got better things to do with my time." And they'll leave.

6. Use of 'marketese' - Marketese is the wildly inflated claims, over-hyped, hard-sell promotional writing style that almost instantly defines a web page as 'Spam'. A study by Dr. Jakob Nielsen found the use of 'Marketese' instantly destroys credibility and trust among most savvy web users.

When visitors encounter web pages that scream phrase like 'insane profits' or 'make money like crazy', they usually associate the page with 'Spam' and immediately leave.

7. Misspellings - How can you trust a page when the page author can't seem to spell even simple words correctly?
With the advent of spelling checkers, there is no good reason any web page should have obvious misspellings - unless the author of the page just doesn't care. And visitors think, "If they don't even bother to spell the easy words right, why should I trust that anything else is correct?" Remove the negatives.

For most web pages (and sales letters), the easiest way to improve the page is to simply 'remove the negatives' that hurt the believability of the piece. To remove the negatives, start by taking care of the seven items on the above list. And then watch as visitors stay on your pages longer.

Nick James is a true example of a self made success. He offers the inside track in every aspect of internet business creation and development. Right now he's giving away a Free Income Secrets DVD for only £1 S&H while stocks last at www.incomesecrets.co.uk