Top 100 Internet Marketing Mistakes

[webwoman]

I am trying to assemble a list of the top 100 internet marketing mistakes netrepreneurs can make.

I have been marketing on the internet since 1996 and I have made my share; but I am interested, with all the expertise out there, what you would say were the worst mistakes marketers can make out there?

[bhartzer]

Add this one:
Accidentally mixing up the Spanish version of your website with the English version--some pages are in Spanish and some are in English. That will certainly mess up your search engine rankings!

I saw this done this week, when someone did a search for the company name the title tag was in English and the description (from the meta tags) were all in Spanish!

[jhusband]

Here's the ones I've heard of or commited.

Make sure all your links work especially to affiliate programs from PPC engines otherwise they get the sales that you paid for but you don't get the credit.

Don't buy e-books on Internet Marketing. Everything you need to know is available for free on this site.

Focus on one program at a time. Automate everything. When it's successful move to the next program.

Make sure to add alt tags to your images.

Goosh this could go on forever! You might have to separate it into categories like SEO PPC Affiliate Design etc.

But I love the idea. I can't wait to read everyone's mistakes.

[mizambar]

I am not too sure if this is considered marketing...

Selling something on your site that you have backordered. I have had a few experiences where I wasn't paying attention to my inventory and I ended up offering products that I didn't currently have. Big Mistake!

[thusmann]

WebWoman you are from Olympia? Welcome to the WebProWorld Community.

I live in the Steamboat Island Area of Olympia...

The number 1 most common mistake I see people make is they start marketing their sites before the site is ready.

I admit that in the planning stages some marketing can be helpful in determining how people interact with the site. When I first created the iBuilt.net site, I used PPC marketing, the http://www.clicktracks.com software, and the http://www.liveperson.com service to to monitor customer interactions on the site. Using these, I continually tweaked the site and tested the response.

It is very important that a site reflects the image of a company. If the site's appearance is poor, so will be the response. Also, the content needs to be targeted to their demographic and has to be presented in an intuitive manner.

As I say on our resources page ( http://www.ibuilt.net/links.htm ):

A well thought-out web site incorporates more than just graphic design, networking technologies and programming. It requires a solid integration of your unique business and marketing strategy. It must have an intuitive interface and execute your objectives efficiently. It should target your customer demographic and promote your products effectively. Without proper planning, your site can turn away potential customers and send out the wrong impression of your company. It can tarnish all the goodwill that you have built.

[hugoguzman]

big fancy intro/splash pages with lots of flash. Even if it comes with an option ot "skip intro" it's still annoying to someone that has seen it more than once.

Also, its not good for seo purposes.

[janeth]

There are so many.

1. Sites with no logo's

2. Colors that hurt your eyes

3. Hit counters on the pages

4. Moving text

5. Links going to other sites at the top of the page

6. Banners all over the home page.

7. Not understanding what your customer needs

8. No contact information any where on the site.

9. Making your customer log in to look at your site.

This could go on forever.

[Webworks7]

Deciding that because you simply must have your site in a particular font with the text wrapped in exactly a certain place, you create all of your pages as graphics of text. These people also neglect the alt tags and title tags and use file names like "page1.html" The end result is a site with not one word on it.

I have seen at least five sites done in this way, and guess what? You can't find them with a search engine no matter how hard you try.

[hal]

the top 100 internet marketing mistakes netrepreneurs can make.

the worst mistakes marketers can make out there?

Unfortunately, webwoman, these are two entirely different questions. Luckily, however, the answer is somewhat the same.

WebPro Poster touched upon it. Janeth is there, too. It's thinking that a customer visiting a Web page is motivated differently than a customer who walks through your front door. Therefore...

The worst mistake a netrepreneur can make is to ignore his/her core business while spending too much time building and re-building Web pages. The Web page doesn't sell. It's the offer, the offer, the offer.

The worst mistake a marketer can make is to call in a Web page designer instead of a Web marketer to build the Web site. Flash doesn't sell the product. Pretty colors won't sell it. And, strange typeface/background color selections won't sell, either. It's the offer, the offer, the offer.

Be sure to post your list so we can all steal it when you're done. :-)

Maybe we need two lists, here. The second one would be what's also obviously on our minds ... the one hundred worst page design mistakes that we make.

Wait! A third one, too ... the one hundred worst seo mistakes that we make.

Three distinctly different lists, but the same end result. Interesting ... interesting ...


Hal

[Runesmith]

A useful tip I came across in a Web design book:

"Nobody wants to see your photograph on your Website unless you're famous or naked."

[ACross]

Another biggie: "under construction" pages.

This is along the lines of marketing your site before it is ready, brought up by thusmann, but goes a step further. Parts of the site are ready, so the owner decides to go live and just have unfinished pages display the "under construction" text of graphic.

The problems are two-fold. First, it is difficult to get a directory, like DMOZ or Yahoo, to link to a site that has under construction pages.

Second, your visitors will not appreciate the disappointment of not finding what they were looking for when they clicked on the link.

If you must put up your site before all the pages are presentable, simply do not link to pages that aren't finished. Add the links to the navigation when the page is complete.

This outlines, of course, just one of the hundreds of website marketing bloopers.

-ACross

[Wildflowerdyes]

When you first start out marketing your website it may be tempting to use pay-per-click engines to quickly boost traffic to your site. It can be a good option if you choose the right keywords to promote. Do not use general words, but try and use phrases that potential buyers may type in to find you. In the past I have wasted too much money before really figureing out how to use PPC enginges to my advantage and not just to put more money in there pockets.
In general, really research where your marketing dollars are best spent to promote your website. It's easy to waste a lot of money and get no traffic or sales when you first dive in to the web site world.

I still have lots to learn.......:)

[geoffreygag]

Top 100 net marketing mistakes.

1 - Using free hosting services with banners on top.

[httpman]

About keywords (which should bring you your futur customers) :

- building pages with no ideas of the keywords to use. Or the opposite : filling pages with texts where SE will see totally different keywords that the expected ones.

- building highly SE optimised pages, but using keywords that no one never uses. Be ranked 1st on Google with such useless keywords.

JP

[janeth]

Hi JP,
Be ranked first for key words no one will ever use and think you have done good. lol

[venividi]

I hate Welcome pages with flahsy logo plus 3 words:

Enter
Skip intro

Grrr!
Many site owners go for such bells and whistles: I can imagine them opening their sites everyday and think:
"Oh what a beautiful site I have, Oh what a beautiful site!"

Valeria

[flawebworks]

[quote="janeth"]There are so many.

1. Sites with no logo's

====

Why is it important to have a logo?

[Jörn Malek]

Hi
our 19,000 + pages plus web site has hundreds of pages in three different languages and several pages in 5 different languages. I dont seem to confuse search engines as far as I can tell, but yes we had several people recommend to us to run a seperate site with a seperate domain for each language, but this would complicate things a lot for us.
Also I am using this heading:

<META http-equiv=content-type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
This should cover Europen Languages, right?

Any opinions on that?

Have a happy day
Jörn

[venividi]

Originally Posted by venividi

I hate Welcome pages with flahsy logo plus 3 words:
Enter
Skip intro

Sorry, I was so transported by my hate for these splash pages that I forgot to continue.
There may happen that your site is visited in a long sequence. It depends on the product of course. For example, if you sell kitchen furniture, visitors will certainly not stop at the first site but are likely to go on visiting deep in the search engine list to see what's available.
In these cases, I presume that the visitor will write down a site name that looks interesting in order to go back. This happened to me last week and it was a really terrible afternoon. I was looking for a new kitchen and visited all the sites of Italian kitchen furniture producers that attended the recent Furniture exhibition in Milan.
Well, all of them, without exception started with a splash page where their logo or other geometrical figures danced gracefully while a small loading dot dot dot tried to keep me quiet for they were doing something in order to let me in. Some even had a second splash page announcing: Kitchen furniture (flash again), or Choose your language. When I was finally ushered into the place I had a choice between Our Philosophy, Contacts, News and Products but I was already angry. Why do they think I came to visit their site in the first place? I wanted to see their products. Immediately.
What I means is this: if your site is likely to be visited inside a long sequence of sites, study what the others are doing and try to be a little original, and above all, try to put yourself in the visitor's shoes. Even if the furniture was really gorgeous, I gave up. There wasn't one that I could remember.

Valeria

[httpman]

Hi Janeth, nice to meet you on that forum !

Originally Posted by Jörn Malek

<META http-equiv=content-type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
This should cover Europen Languages, right?

Jörn

Yes, you are right.
It will also help Mac users, whose computer is sometimes using a specific default Mac charset. Without above meta tag, this results in hard-to-read pages : most of our european accented characters are translated into some sort of egyptian hieroglyphs... (or you should use the &xxx; or &#xxx; symbols for those characters)

JP

[Jörn Malek]

[quote="janeth"]There are so many.

1. Sites with no logo's

2. Colors that hurt your eyes

3. Hit counters on the pages

4. Moving text

5. Links going to other sites at the top of the page

6. Banners all over the home page.

7. Not understanding what your customer needs

8. No contact information any where on the site.

9. Making your customer log in to look at your site.

This could go on forever


10. Build a site without knowing HTML

11.Use Frontpage

12.Hiring a wemaster instead of a web marketer

13.Start the page with a picture

14.Start the page with a table

15.Invest more time for SEO than for marketing.

16.Be in the fist spot with the wrong page.

17.Become dependant (wemaster, Linux!!, Red Hat et.)

18.Geting the traffic and not having the business to take care of it.

18.Too many colours

19.Anything that stays in the way to make the sale!

20.Secure connections all over the place

21.Think that all others know it better than you

22.Too long pages ( I am guilty of that)

23.Links to religious pages

24.Links to ***** enlarger pages

25. Getting links from Link-farms

26.Builing a site with "Look what I can do" in mind instead of "What does the customer expect from me".

27. Submit with ...Gold

Well Janeth, I sure you can continue this list. And give me a mail (directly, jmalek@amnet.co.cr, you know the enemy is listening)

Have a happy day
Jörn







[/u]

[deltatrend]

Hmmm... okay.

I have been asked this week to submit proposals to fix a couple of sites that were made by "designers"
1. Splash pages that open up the main site using javascript in a different window of a specific size.
a.)The search engines can't follow, and
b.)Any links to the site open it in a window of a different size, destroying the carefully designed layout.
2. Sites that use frames with no frames redirect or <noframes> tag. The client is happy that they appear in the top search results, but visitors land on a frame page with no idea what the site is about.
3. Dark background that relies on browser-specific tricks to show the text.
4. All javascript-only navigation techniques.
5. Layouts that assume a specific page size.
6. Contact links or info that are not on the first screen the vistitor views.
And, while we are at it...
7. Unclear focus on what the site is meant to accomplish.
8. Elements that distract from what the main focus.

In my experience, 90% of sites are there to accomplish a limited purpose: to be found, establish credibility, and generate a contact or a sale. The primary marketing mistake is allowing other elements to intrude on the visitors' path toward that purpose.

While I am at the WPW site, I'll add a couple of annoying community-related items:
9. Not showing whether a visitor is logged-in or not.
10. Asking a logged-in member to subscribe.
11. Not showing the name of the topic to which they are replying.
To round out a dirty dozen...
12. Addressing an international audience, without taking into account basic international factors, like date display.

I hope these help. A list like this would be truly helpful, and I hope that WPW gives it a high priority.

[Wildflowerdyes]

Jörn Malek - "23.Links to religious pages"????

Hmmmmmmm, I'm not religious but that one sounds strange. Would that turn customers away?

[gwhite]

1. giving up too early.
2. sticking with something that isn't working too long.
3. build it and they will come mentality.
4. selling stuff and not selling solutions
5. outsourcing the passion.

[wizwow]

I have my top 10. After building sites for over 150 customers of varying levels of savvy....
Some have been mentioned above.

10. Thinking that your idea is unique without finding out how unique (or not) it may be.
9. Wanting to impress other marketers (designers...) instead of customers.
8. Thinking that by putting a Flash Commercial at the beginning of your site, you will inspire me to spend.
7. Big ol' Damn Graphics.
6. Colors chosen cause your wife (lover, mistress...) likes them.
5. Being absolutely sure of what internet marketing is all about without ever having done it.
4. Frontpage
3. Content that is focused on the product instead of the customer. "Aint we great" is not nearly as powerful as "you can be even better".
2. Them stupid gopher's dancing around.
1. Considering testing user experience and user interface design a waste of money. "Hell, I just gotta get it up. Then we'll fix 'er up fine."

My buck3eighty...

Cheers,

[Jörn Malek]

Originally Posted by Wildflowerdyes

Jörn Malek - "23.Links to religious pages"????

Hmmmmmmm, I'm not religious but that one sounds strange. Would that turn customers away?

Well,
I personally don't have a religion, after realizing that most of the wars in the world are about religions ( or crude oil), I decided to step out of the "club" my parents had put me in.

My wife is religious, I have nothing against her being religios, but I don't believe a web site with an international audience is the place to express it, unless the site is about religion.

There are parts of this world that have never heard about a Christian Religion and most people don't know about the thousand of different religions in Japan.

It was never possible to put Catholics and Protestants in Ireland in the same boat and if you lived for a while in South Carolina like I did, you know exactly what I am talking about. It's all about the daily bread and water, tolerace and education; something most people on this planet don't have.

Have a happy day
Jörn

[stecindor]

OK! Been a newbie I have to ask. What is wrong with using Frontpage?

[stecindor]

OK! Been a newbie I have to ask. What is wrong with using Frontpage?
PS: Sorry for the second post. It was an accident.

[Jörn Malek]

Originally Posted by stecindor

OK! Been a newbie I have to ask. What is wrong with using Frontpage?
PS: Sorry for the second post. It was an accident.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>a1-home-equity-lanes</TITLE>
<META name="description" content="Resources for home equity loans, secured credit cards, direct loans, credit repair, student loan">...............

1.) First I don't think anybody is looking for equety-lanes unless they make a typo, that's what I first thought it is. So fix your title tag, so somebody will find you !!

2.) Look at all the miles of code until you finally get to your body, that's part of what's wrong with Frontpage, plus when you do corrections, not knowing code, the old stuff stays on until your page gets first very slow and finally stops functioning at all. At least that's what happend to me, in the beginning several years ago when I felt on top of the world knowing Frontpage. I am sure in the meantime the programm got better, but still, it's a programm and nothing beats writing code. ( At least that's what I think )

Try the Macromedia Homesite5 Editor. I love it and it's the fastest way to learn.

Have fun and don't give up, there is a big wide world in front of you !

Have happy day Jörn

[stecindor]

Thanks Jorn,
I used Home equity lanes because according to wordtracker "Home equity lanes" was search 932 times. Might have a chance with this phrase for SE placement verses "Mortgages." I'm going to check out Homesite5 Editor.
Steve

[TrafficProducer]

Joking:-

"Nobody wants to see your photograph on your Website unless you're famous or naked."

Which is the better of the two above? How about "famous and naked."

~~~

Bad :-

No. 1. Expecting to take over Google or Yahoo in three easy weeks...

No. 2. Flash page on first page.

No. 3. Links that result in errors pages.

No. 4. No way to find out More Information.

No. 5. Poor Customer, (Person to Person support), help, etc.

No. 6. Filling in an online form incorrectly, asked to click back button only to find all information entered has vanished and needs to be re-enterd.

No. 7. Emails on pages that do not work. If you must use email contact mat sure the at least work. (Don't display an email if it doesn't function)

No. 8a. (A classic) Dark text on a Dark background.

No. 8b. A Dark background.

No. 9. Pop Ups.... ARGH!!!!

No. 10. Click Back button disabled.

Thats enough to start with...

[TrafficProducer]

A newbie I have to ask. What is wrong with using Frontpage?

Try making a page with text hyperlinks where the lines of text are very close, on top of each other, together. Now add another couple of text hyperlinks between the lines.

Look at the HTML code Argh! It's all over the place, Blank links broken text* etc. and for the above you may find one line link merging with another.

* Example of broken text:-

today


Is the

first day
of the
week

( This may put search engines off listing you)

[gwhite]

Remember the topic is Internet "MARKETING" mistakes. This is not about what you like, it is about what sells.

1) Frontpage is not a marketing mistake, maybe a technology one.
2) Pop-ups make money, or so many people wouldn't use them.
3) You can take over Google in three weeks, given enough of an advertising budget.

[Jörn Malek]

[quote="TrafficProducer"]No. 8b. A Dark background.
[quote

What's wrong with dark background?
We have all our pages on dark background. It's easy on the eyes, pictues look great and our page veiw ranking seems to proof the point.
http://www.1-costaricalink.com/



Have a happy day
Jörn

[acornwebworks]

[quote="Jörn Malek"]

Originally Posted by TrafficProducer

No. 8b. A Dark background.
[quote

What's wrong with dark background?
We have all our pages on dark background. It's easy on the eyes, pictues look great and our page veiw ranking seems to proof the point.
http://www.1-costaricalink.com/

Sorry. I have *GOT* to disagree.

Your blue text on black killed my eyes. (The red was even worse.) It's a color combination that makes the text wiggle when lots of folks try to read it. Blue on black has long been considered 'poor form' because of this effect.

Plus the photos I viewed were blurry...although the black background may have been a factor in this as well. They certainly aren't set off well by the background.

Just because people go to your website doesn't mean they like the look of your website. Heck, Costa Rica is a bright and sunny country. Why would you want to make a dark website?

And please dump that fixed macaw background image. I'm looking at your site on a 1024 setting, and the darn things aren't even aligned well.

Sorry to be so crabby, but your site is definitely more proof that dark backgrounds with blue lettering should be avoided, no matter what the designer - however nice he is - might think :-)

Best regards,
Kendall

[Jörn Malek]

We started this web portal in 1999. It was always dark. During these years we only received totally 3 negative comments on the black or dark backgrounds: Two were from webmasters of two different hotels. The third was from the owner of a sex website. He said only sex web sites are black ( because the pictures show better )

I just made our index page white ( of course that was in a hurry ) and I didn't creat a new css, but I really would like to hear more opinions.

http://www.1-costaricalink.com/costa...tion/white.htm

here the same in black,

http://www.1-costaricalink.com/index.htm


Here in the office all our webmasters, including me have the editor set with black background, because our eyes hurt after a while if we look too long into white stuff. I think the same applies for people that surf the web a lot and anybody with the most minimal grafic background knows that pictures look better on black.

Comparing our page view with competitors sites, our viewers stay up to ten times longer on our site.

The guy from the sex site told me, if I would make the pages white it would increase traffic. I personally believe the opposite is true. Anytime I have something bright I try to make the screen as small as possible. I even have my office painted dark blue ( see my picture ).

There is a saying: Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder or something like that, but since our site is for the public, it would be nice to hear some more comments on that.

Have a happy day and thanks for your critical view.

Jörn

[Jörn Malek]

I just browsed around a bit and found this article on the weeb on how to show pictures:

http://www.noisebetweenstations.com/...photos_on_web/

besides other things it says:

.....Color photos on a black background enhances the "slide look" of images on computer screens, as if we're in a dark room looking at slide projections (see Philip Greenspun's Adding Images to Your Site for more about the greater contrast range of a computer screen). I think it also looks good using this image because it simulates our looking out a window; the window frame is hidden from the light that reveals the city skyline. For another example see the National Geographic site.
This is my favorite approach for color photos because the colors become so vibrant and rich. However, as with the black and white example above, an image with black on the edges can get lost on the page.....


Jörn

[Reesa Marchetti]

Hey,

I know this is getting a little off the track, but I must stand up for the latest version of FrontPage. I use FP, Dreamweaver, Flash, Notepad, etc. according to the needs of each Web site I do.

Because FP is often the choice of newbies, sites done with it often show obvious design and coding flaws. But unlike previous versions of FP, the latest lets you automatically optimize the code to eliminate errors and unnecessary lines. And you can easily work on the code, as in Dreamweaver, in a split-screen mode.

FP has advantages over other WYSIWYG programs, including a drag-and-drop navigation system and themes that can be beautiful if you customize them.

That said, using amateurish FP features such as a hit counter on your home page is a Web marketing and design no-no!

As far as not putting your picture on your Web site, it all depends how you use it. A tasteful photo in the About Us section is usually a marketing plus, as it can boost customer confidence in you.

[Jörn Malek]

Originally Posted by Reesa Marchetti

Hey,

I know this is getting a little off the track, but I must stand up for the latest version of FrontPage. I use FP, Dreamweaver, Flash, Notepad, etc. according to the needs of each Web site I do.

Because FP is often the choice of newbies, sites done with it often show obvious design and coding flaws. But unlike previous versions of FP, the latest lets you automatically optimize the code to eliminate errors and unnecessary lines. And you can easily work on the code, as in Dreamweaver, in a split-screen mode.

FP has advantages over other WYSIWYG programs, including a drag-and-drop navigation system and themes that can be beautiful if you customize them.

That said, using amateurish FP features such as a hit counter on your home page is a Web marketing and design no-no!

As far as not putting your picture on your Web site, it all depends how you use it. A tasteful photo in the About Us section is usually a marketing plus, as it can boost customer confidence in you.

Reesa,
you are probably right. I have seen pretty good and professionaly looking pages done with FP. I am just getting too old and too old-fashioned.

In my office we have an absolute ban of all programms except Macromedia Homesite 5 without the WYSIWYG option. I want to have pages I understand and as I said I am getting too old to learn how to get rid of all that excess code produced by programms. Dreamweaver sits on our bookshelf and the last time I used FP was 4 years ago.

Have a happy day
Jörn

[virtualtraveller]

Many of the no-no's mentioned above pertain strictly to SEO marketing. Anyone who's ever worked as a content manager/web editor/web master/designer will know how irritating is it that the marketing department gets to override the rest of the input towards building a successful site, without any significant consideration towards other elements of web prescence.

I can already hear the cries of derision, but without considering the overall objectives of site first, your sure to disappoint the client or, if the site is your own, seel yourself short.

While marketing a site is of paramount importance because it brings in the 'moola', a good site development and marketing team will successfully intergrate their actions with the other objetives of a site. Brilliant site marketing and SEO will bring in short term gains but can be thin on establishing long term strength.

A golden rule of web business is to always consider your site as one of many aspects of your business, not the sole activity. It's purpose is not only to sell but to promote. SEOs may disagree but the continual changing of SE algos and evolvement of this highly competitive field means a long term strategic plan towards establishing yourself as a brand (or at least well-postioned site) is essential for longevity.

Like all advertising, the client's brief is your point of reference, if the brief seems to be unrealistic you can advise otherwise or withdraw, but always bear in mind that the company has a bigger objective than simply making an instant sale.

Here are some arguments to consider:

Several comments in this string criticised the flash intro page, and indeed this technique seems like a designer's indulgence, however, if your SEO is targeted at deep links with targeted keywords then who cares if your homepage isn't SE friendly. None of your links need point at the index page, Some sites need to leave a good impression, especially if style is important. A site selling modern furniture or highly fashionable & expensive goods will want to portray this with an expensive and impressive 'shop front'.

Image heavy pages are necessary for brochure sites, pages that are optimised to catch traffic but minimal on eye candy aren't going to convert to sales. Take for instance a site selling safari tours to Africa. You can have your pages loaded with the keywords and inbound links but you would want to present pages on the rest of the site that are visual and exciting.

Pages that are designed to impress google aren't necessarily going to impress the viewer, so much attention is given to bringing in traffic that sites look bland and stripped down. Your conversion rate is low and you can't understand why. It's all sub-concious confidence that the viewer has in your ability to deliver a quality service. Web users are becoming increasingly savvy, they know how to spot a 'fly by night', they have choice, they know what sort of site gives them confidence.

Overcooking it is another factor. Marketers are so focused on optimising a site according to SE criteria that you end up with a page looking like a direct sales magazine. This is a classic difference between the North American and European approach. While North AMerican viewers are impervious to hard sell techniques, Europeans (well the Brits particularly) see through this and opt for the more subtle alternatives. Look at linkexplore.com, there is so much oversell and repetition on this page that you give up, how can you take this guy seriously? Anyone who knows even a little bit about SEO will spot the inexperience of this guy's approach. It's an insult to our intelligence.

Know your audience. Understand what they expect from your site in order to do business with you. Fitting your marketing around this is one of the key challenges of a marketing strategy. A marketing plan makes use of many different tools, some online, some off line, and both above and below the line. Unless you're just out to score as best you can from SE, a serious player will use a number of resources available to bring in sustained and consistent traffic from genuine potential customers/clients. If this means producing a stylish site, parts of which defy conventional online marketing techniques, then so be it. If it means presenting some elements of the business in a manner that doesn't ideally suit online marketing, then you'll have to live with it, for there are other advantages to achieving your overall aims.

[jhusband]

I wouldn't mind creating an e-book on SEO mistakes. It's narrower than this post. So if anyone is interested let me know.

[Mukul]

Great Thread. So much to learn. Here are my thoughts :

Overlooking Simplicity

This is something which should be there in each and every website. When we take a look at a successful website we immediately seem to understand what it is about, where to click and what to do but many websites seem to ignore simplicity and spend money on advertising and what not

Overlooking Customer Service

All done well, the sites which are not providing good customer service have failed and will fail in future. People want to do online shopping for faster service and when this is not done everything else fails.

Overlooking Search Engine Traffic

Being an Indian Company, I always see that sorporates here tend to ignore search engine traffic and they forget that internet marketing is different from offline markeing. Take this option too far and you will some websites so focussed on search engine tarffic that they start looking unprofessional and meaningless.

Overlooking Seccondary Source on Income

I firmly believe in this one. Each website should have a seccondary source of income which can be marketed to the same target audience. Its best way to make sure that you dont run out of money.

Not having a business plan

People sometimes find internet as a tool to rake some easy cash. This is not true. Making money on the internet requires as much hard work and research as it will require in making money in any offline market. The value of research ic very important.

Not measuring results

If you are not measuring results then probably its a hobby and not a business for you.

Well I really belive that this thread can go n for ages. Its important to learn, implement and measure the performance.

Mukul

[sergiullas]

Originally Posted by Jörn Malek

There are so many.

1. Sites with no logo's
.
.
.

12.Hiring a wemaster instead of a web marketer
[/u]

You should say, work together with the webmarketer !

A good weBmaster will must know about e-business (e-marketing, e-branding, e-commerce)!

[sergiullas]

Jörn Malek wrote:
There are so many.

1. Sites with no logo's
.
.
.

12.Hiring a wemaster instead of a web marketer



You should say, work together with the webmarketer !

A good weBmaster will must know about e-business (e-marketing, e-branding, e-commerce)!

[synergytheory]

Most of these mistakes are good to take notice of, but alot of them can be used without any problems too [IMO]. Keep it balanced, if you're a newbie use all these suggestions as a guide line. Horses for courses I say, what works for one site/business might not work for another.

Most people hate flash intro's [even hardcores flashers hate intro's these days] but in the right situation, I think it's a great way to let people know what your business is about. But, do have some kind of cookie so the intro only shows the first time you visit the site.

[crashingflwrgrl]

I'm finding most of the things listed here are not really marketing mistakes rather mistakes in site design.

On the other hand...having a poorly designed website is most likely a HUGE marketing mistake...lol

[janeth]

Hi crashingflwrgrl,

I would think that marketing starts with site design. (-:

[bebarrett]

Not giving something away for free.

This could be related information to your product, instructions, or articles that offer tips on how to make an informed buying dicision.

Content gets the search enigines attention and lets people ( who might not have bought anything today, but are in the market ) a reason to come back.

[acornwebworks]

My husband and I were watching a movie on TV last night and an ad came on about adult ADD. Since I suffer from it and had my laptop in front of me, I of course went to the website instead of watching the movie when it came back on :-)

Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the Living With ADD link - a featured link - and read:

"In the future, this section of our site will offer information on everything from memory and listening skills to organization and time management. Check back here for articles about..."

And the next link?

"Since ADD is an emerging field, new issues related to the condition are coming to light all the time. In the near future, you will be able to follow these links to:"

Can you believe it?? These folks are spending tons of money on TV ads...and they literally have "Under Construction" pages as two of their six main pages!!!!!!

Now *THAT* is what I call an Internet Marketing Error :-)

Kendall

[acornwebworks]

Originally Posted by Jörn Malek

We started this web portal in 1999. It was always dark. During these years we only received totally 3 negative comments on the black or dark backgrounds

And how many 'partially' negative comments did you get :-) Just joking. But your use of 'totally negative' does seem to apply that you have had additional negative comments.

I just made our index page white ( of course that was in a hurry ) and I didn't creat a new css, but I really would like to hear more opinions.

First of all, please change the font to Arial like your black site :-)

Second, I don't think that simply making the background white then asking us to compare the two allows for a fair assessment of which background works better. Your graphics are all designed for a dark background and look awkward on a white one.

I'd like to see you do something artistic on the white, then ask us.

Here in the office all our webmasters, including me have the editor set with black background, because our eyes hurt after a while if we look too long into white stuff. I think the same applies for people that surf the web a lot...

I can understand people having personal preferences for their work environment. But I'm also going to assume that people who come to your website are searching for information, not 'just to surf', so I wouldn't assume that your visitors are major web surfers.

... and anybody with the most minimal grafic background knows that pictures look better on black.

This touches on what other folks have been mentioning as bad marketing practice...people getting caught up in the 'artistic' stuff. If you stop and think about it, what does 'anyone with the most minimal graphic background' have to do with the purpose of your website?

It's like like web designers who think their navigation is just fine because they can find anything they want - since they know where it all is - and want to argue when a visitor says they find it hard to find things on the site.

Comparing our page view with competitors sites, our viewers stay up to ten times longer on our site.

Perhaps it's because your site content is better? That's why I stay on a site. You've got a treasure trove of information there. I would bet you money that's why people stay, not your black background and blue and green text.

The guy from the sex site told me, if I would make the pages white it would increase traffic.

I agree that that sounds pretty silly. People don't find you because of your white background :-) That's quite an interesting concept.

Best regards,
Kendall