Part 3: What's wrong with your web site?

What’s keeping your visitors from getting to your properties? Why aren’t they making enquiries? Why don’t they register for your newsletter?

• Mistake 1. Conceal what your web site is about
• Mistake 2. Show visitors adverts (and make them watch them)
• Mistake 3. Tell visitors to get lost
• Mistake 4. Skimp on the content
• Mistake 5. Use rich-media
• Mistake 6. Make text hard to read
• Mistake 7. Create pages that load slowly
• Mistake 8. Make visitors register
• Mistake 9. Never gain your visitor’s confidence
• Mistake 10. Ignore popular computers and browsers
• Further reading
• Summary

Mistake #1. Conceal what your web site is about

If a first-time visitor to your web site can’t figure out what it is all about within 10 seconds (some say it’s just 8 seconds), they’ll leave and, most probably, never come back. Within that time, if you haven’t identified the purpose of your site and given them a reason to stay – they’ll leave, for good.

Here’s some of the things often featured as ‘home’ pages:

Introductory flash presentation

Language selection page

Company logo with an ‘enter site’ button

Company mission statement

99% of the flash introductions just do some ‘clever’ things with the company logo. Some (mercifully) have a ‘skip intro’ button which kind of implies that the designer knows that it’s superfluous fluff that should, indeed be skipped. Anything with a ‘skip’ button should never be there in the first place, by definition.

Even when (on the rare occasion) the flash introduction does, actually convey the purpose of the web site, it fails to deliver a compelling reason for the visitor to stay and almost always fails in giving them a means of getting what they want (without having to ‘enter site’).

When a visitor follows a link to your web site, isn’t it because they actually want to ‘enter’ it? Why make them click again to enter by placing an unnecessary and annoying hurdle right at the start?

Surely a language selection is a valid splash page? After all, isn’t it better to deliver content in the visitor’s preferred language? It’s a very high-risk tactic. Unless you can convince a visitor that you have valuable answers to their most pressing concerns, why would they bother selecting their language in the first place?

Why not automatically direct them to a home page based on their browser language settings where you can deliver the purpose of your web site and your killer benefit (and some language links in case the automatic selection didn’t work for some reason).

What’s YOUR web site about?

If you sell inland property in Northern Spain – perhaps the first thing that you show your visitors would be something like:

“Choose from over 200 stunning rural retreats in Northern Spain”

Spell it out, make it obvious to the visitor what you’re all about and make it compelling so they stay around to click again.

Perhaps you provide a property finding service? How about starting with something like:

“Insider tips for securing your dream home in Spain”

If you make this type of statement the first thing visitors see and add some enchanting pictures of Spanish property, you’ll stand a good chance of drawing visitors in to the site.

Mistake #2. Show visitors adverts (and make them watch them)

Most people hate pop-up adverts. That includes pop-unders and all the other variants that attempt to soften what is always an intrusion into the browsing experience of the visitor. Why else would every browser and tool-bar now feature a built-in pop-up blocker?

Banner adverts too aren’t much better either, particularly those that use animated images or flash. They waste download speed and interfere with the visitor getting to the content that they’re looking for - your properties.

The worst type is the advert that scrolls down and obscures the main content and has no way of being switched off.

Every time you display an advert, you show it instead of your main content. Even done subtly, it’s one more choice for a visitor to make – see your properties or the advert (or leave).

Mistake #3. Tell visitors to get lost

A great way to lose a visitor is by allowing them to get lost themselves. Does your site open in lots of different windows? Does it have a consistent navigation scheme so that a visitor immediately knows:

• Where am I?
• Where have I been?
• Where can I go now?
• Where’s the home page?

The navigation on your web site must be simple and consistent so that you don’t lose visitors. Most, if they are in any doubt about any of the four questions above, will not hesitate to move to a site where they are more comfortable and better directed.

Common mistakes include using different types of navigation on the same site (sometimes on the same page), badly worded links so the visitor doesn’t know where they’ll go when they click and links that are hidden or are counter-intuitive when moving between pages or sections of the web site.

Ideally you want to minimise the number of clicks they have to make to get to the content (your properties). Good navigation gets them there in as few steps as possible, without introducing any uncertainty about what their next click should be.

Internet users are impatient and are always one click away from leaving, so you should not presume that they will expend any effort to ‘find’ your properties.

Any time you ask your visitors to click on a link, you risk losing them. Marketing studies have shown that you can expect anywhere from 30% to 60% of your visitors to leave with each click! If the attrition rate really is that high, your navigation needs to make every click count by being intuitive and delivering valuable content at every stage.

The two most common locations for navigation bars are horizontally along the top of the page (below your logo probably), or vertically down the left-hand side of the page. Amazon.com, for example uses top navigation for main categories and left-hand navigation for more detailed choices within a category.

There is no single ‘right’ way to create site navigation but a good way to see if yours is working is to get complete strangers to test it for you – people like your visitors. Set them some common objectives like “display a list of all properties under 150,000 euros” or “make a property enquiry” and leave them to it.

Ask them to record their findings and their answers to the four navigation questions at the top of this section. You’ll be surprised by things that look blindingly obvious to you. Use their feedback to make changes (one at a time) and then test again, and again, and again ..

Mistake #4. Skimp on the content

Visitors arrive at your web site in the hope and expectation that you’ll be satisfying their desire for information. To keep them interested your content must be Up-to-date, Relevant, Concise and Accurate.

Up-to-date?

Of course your property details must be current. Is a visitor likely to return to your site after they’ve made an enquiry about a property only to be informed that it is no longer available? The additional content pages must also be current. Any page that features time- sensitive content must be maintained – the cost of failing to do so is losing the visitor.

If today, you came across a web page for a new construction project due for completion in August 2006 – what does that tell you about the owner of that site? Would it instill you with confidence that the rest of the site is kept updated and accurate?

Stale content sends a signal to your visitors that you don’t care about them, haven’t considered their needs and can’t be relied upon. Remember, they’re looking for reasons to leave your site. They’ll give you every chance to disappoint them.

Relevant?

What are your visitors looking for besides property details? What’s the profile of your typical customer? If you have a typical mix of visitors, most likely they’ll be looking for one of four things:

• Property as an investment (capital growth, rental income or both)
• Second or holiday home
• Permanent or main residence
• Business premises

Of course, a visitor will have a mixture of reasons for looking for property in Spain. Someone looking for a holiday home will almost certainly want to make a sound investment too but their primary reason for looking for property might be to facilitate family holidays.

An investor in off-plan property will be far more interested in how similar developments have performed financially rather than in details about nearby beaches and tourist attractions.

A prospective client looking for a permanent residence might be less concerned about distance to the nearest airports because they’re unlikely to be taking many flights. By contrast, a holiday-home prospect will almost certainly use proximity to an airport as a main buying criteria because they’ll be making that trip more frequently.

Every individual wants something different or has a different way of evaluating information that’s related to a property but it need not be complicated for you to satisfy them all.

Only show your visitors this extra content in relation to property information. In other words, only link from a property page to information that’s relevant to that property. For example, why show a general map of the area as a page in it’s own right when you could just as easily show a map of roughly where the property is?

Concise & accurate?

Don’t make your visitors read, they prefer to scan. Your visitors won’t thank you either for your flowery prose in describing a property. Give them the (accurate) pitch in as few words as possible. Enough said?

Mistake #5. Use ‘rich-media’

• Force your visitors to listen to music or some other soundtrack. Hide or completely omit a button to turn the sound off.
• Animate your company logo because that’s the main thing you want to draw their attention to.
• Have promotions and subscriptions flying across the screen from all different directions to completely distract your visitors.
• Make them choose between a ‘flash’ and a ‘non-flash’ version of your site (and then still use just a little bit of flash on the non-flash site – in the navigation maybe).
• Use JavaScript to create rollover navigation to make visitors guess what the button does and where the link will take them.
• Use JavaScript to create navigation that requires such precise mouse control that it’s difficult to accurately select the link they want.

Most of these (and a million others) are usually webmaster-led because they want to play with technology that’s new to them and have some fun experimenting with it. They almost always cost you visitors who’ll flee your site as soon as they encounter such things.

Getting some real users to test your site and give you feedback will weed out most of these. Remember, anything that gets between the visitor and your properties has got to go!

Mistake #6. Make text hard to read

Much of the most valuable content you’ll have on your web site will be written text. Of course you’ll have plenty of property photographs too but your visitors, not to mention the search engines, want to see some text as well. There are five ways to make text hard to read:

1. Make it small


2. Use colour creatively


3. Choose a strange font


4. Use a weird alignment


5. Format it badly

Most browsers allow the visitor to change the size of the text that they see on a web site to a level that they find comfortable. It is possible, however to override that behaviour and ‘fix’ the font size and many designers do so because it helps with web page layout if they can accurately predict how the text will look.

With a bit of clever design, though it is possible to have the best of both worlds and allow people to adjust the text size to their own liking and have a predictable layout.

When it comes to colour – black text on a plain white background is pretty hard to beat. The opportunities for creating disastrous text/background colour combinations are endless. Apart from wanting to make sure that your colour selections don’t actually make your visitors sick, you’ll want to ensure that they display with enough contrast on all kinds of monitors.

Some fonts, although beautiful, are just difficult to read on a monitor. Stick to Arial or Times – it’s what magazines use – and they know what they’re doing.

Justified text is harder to read and scan than standard left-aligned text. It’s true that justified text looks neater because it doesn’t have that jagged right edge but if you actually want your visitors to read your content – do what the newspapers do, left justify it.

People scan instead of reading every word, they use formatting to give them visual ‘clues’ about the important parts of the content. Break your text into small paragraphs of a few sentences and your visitors will read more of it.

Finally, don’t create text using images or flash, because:

• it increases the load time of the page
• it isn’t search engine friendly
• the graphics are often of poor quality and can appear jagged
• design mistakes are hard to correct

The words on your website act as your 24-hour sales consultant and if you have spent time crafting what the words say, it’s a shame to format them in such a way which means that your visitors never get to read them.

Mistake #7. Create pages that load slowly

Page load times should be kept to a minimum. This applies to every aspect of your web site – all the images and logos, even the way the text is formatted.

If at all possible (and it almost always is) link to external pages rather than embed formatting and scripting information on each of your web pages.

Talk to your webmaster about using external style sheets and external scripting pages. Your web site will load faster and your visitors will spend less time waiting for the content that they want.

Mistake #8. Make visitors register

By all means ask your visitors to register for your newsletter or to receive email updates or whatever.

Even give them an incentive for registering with you but never make them register before you show them your properties.

The problem is, because you haven’t shown them any properties yet or they’ve only had limited interaction with you so far, they have no reason to trust you with their contact details.

They leave your web site and find another one where they can browse and enquire unmolested. You’ve succeeded in creating the outcome that you were trying to avoid – you’ve lost a prospect.

Now, if you were to show them some properties, allow them to make an enquiry, develop a rapport with them – the chances are they will want to register with you – all you’ll need to do is ask.

Mistake #9. Never win a visitor’s confidence

Every web site is different but there are a few basic pages your visitors will expect to see, because they’re now considered to be ‘standard equipment’. If they’re missing, your visitor will wonder what else is ‘missing’ from your company. They’re expecting to see:

Frequently Asked Questions – where you list the most common questions visitors tend to ask and provide the answers. Not only does this address your visitors’ questions, it also allows you to directly address their concerns. It’s also a good way of minimising the amount of routine one-to-one emails that you have to respond to.

Privacy Statement – where you assure your visitors that you will respect theirs. Any legal statements, guarantees, disclaimers and other policies should be included here too. Take a look at other web sites to get an idea of their standard content.

About Us – where you let your visitors know who they’re dealing with. Having an ‘About Us’ page goes a long way to establishing trust.

Contact Us – where you provide full contact information. Would you feel comfortable investing a significant sum of money when the web site in question lists a post office box and a mobile telephone number as their only contact methods?

None of these pages are difficult to create or maintain but your visitors will notice them missing if they’re not there and it will impact your credibility with them.

Mistake #10. Ignore users of popular computers and browsers

Take the time to test your web pages in different web browsers as well as in different screen resolutions. Your web designer will probably be designing your web site using a larger resolution screen than many of your visitors. He might even be designing using a different type of browser, even operating system. The difference is that what looks OK on one resolution/browser/system combination may look disastrous on another – and there are a lot of combinations – almost 100 of them to test your web site on.

95% of your visitors will probably be using Windows and Internet Explorer and a screen resolution of 1024×768 pixels. If you add the Firefox browser and a screen resolution of 800×600 to that combination, you’ll probably include 98% of your customers.

By thoroughly testing your web site on these two browsers and resolutions, you’ll have the majority of the problem solved.

Further reading

• useit.com – List of web design failures from usability guru, Jakob Nielsen
• anybrowser.com – Collection of webmaster tools for testing web site compatibility
• websiteoptimization.com – Free tool to evaluate page load times and spot potential problems

Summary

The most important part of your entire web site is the first thing a visitor sees, without scrolling down the page.

It’s why you need to avoid design errors like banners, adverts, logo animation, mission statements and splash pages. Your web site navigation needs to be clear, unambiguous, and consistent throughout.

Once you’ve completed designing your web site, make a point of constantly testing new things, even if you currently have a web site that is doing well. By tracking your results carefully, you can keep visitors on your site longer, help them find what they’re looking for more quickly, and convert them into prospective clients more reliably.

Next: Part 4. Making sense of statistics

Article Contents

1. Introduction to Internet marketing – why market on the Internet at all?
2. Listing properties – making the most of your most valuable content
3. What’s wrong with your web site? – 10 mistakes that keep visitors away
4. Making sense of statistics – hits, pages, cookies, visits and visitors
5. Saving time managing properties – exporting and distributing property details
6. Property photos that sell – professional photography tips

 

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