10 Ways To Drive Visitors Away From Your Website

There are tons of resources and self proclaimed experts available that will teach you how to make money on the internet. But, perhaps it’s easier to demonstrate what to do, with a lesson on what not to do. This article will show you how to drive visitors away from your website screaming “Get me outta here!” If you prefer being alone with your website and don’t want all those pesky visitors bothering you, then follow the guidelines below and you’ll get rid of them quick as a blink.

1. Don’t state on your website what you do or what you sell. Make it a complete mystery why you decided to build your website in the first place. It’s like a secret club that only marketers understand– your visitors are left in the dark. Have you been to sites like this where you show up and think “What the heck is this site about?” If you’re not presenting a clear statement about why your visitors should spend their money (or at least come back again), then you’re on your way to hermit-land.

2. Overwhelm visitors with lots of information that has nothing to do with selling your product or service. Almost as bad as the “What is this site about?” Problem is the “Oh my Goodness! Oh my Gracious!” sites. As a visitor, you know the sites I’m talking about. The page opens and your jaw drops. There is a sea of banners, with links everywhere and articles galore. Where do you go? What do you do? I’ll tell you what I do. Click the little “x’ in the upper right-hand corner to get the heck outta there!

3. Make the ordering process really complicated. There’s nothing I love more than putting items into my shopping cart and then spending 20 minutes trying to figure out how to set up an account and pay. Guess what? I sure don’t click the ‘contact us’ button. I click the “x” instead. You’ve succeeded in getting rid of yet another pesky customer who wanted to spend money.

4. Fill your site with outdated information and broken links. You can definitely dodge a few visitors with this one. Visitors click on a link that is broken — and off they go.

5. Make sure there’s no way for an interested customer or business partner to contact you. Heaven forbid, you might get some spam if you have your contact information on your site. Let alone the trust factor – by hiding how to reach you it will make it easier to not ask any questions. It might be easier to just put a link to Dex, and then mention that you don’t subscribe.

6. Advertise products on your site, then ask the customer to type in a zip code to see if it is actually available, then you slip them the “Sorry- its not available to you, but look at all the other deals we have! If you are lucky, you just might find one at a store near you!” page.

7. Instead of having a hidden company policy, just state clearly on your site “We do not make in store transfers. We hoard our product for our local customers, and are not willing to help you. But since you are here, why not look at the deals we are giving our local customers! Aren’t they great!” Just make sure your disclaimer states clearly that you advertise products that you don’t carry in stock, and that will make everyone happy. Besides, we only want to see what you could sell, not what you actually sell.

8. Make sure you use what you or your designer thinks is the best looking flash intro screen possible. Make it at least 5 minutes in length, and don’t forget to make the ‘skip intro’ link really small and almost the same color as the background, because it will get in the way of the artistic value. That way your site will not get listed very high in the search engines, and the customers that actually find it will not want to wait for the whole video to play before they leave. Also, make sure that you use the latest version of Flash player, which will make sure the remaining customers have to download the latest version to see your site.

9. Make sure you don’t forget the popups for you newsletter. I don’t get enough newsletters from your site, so be sure you pop up that reminder every page. Who knows, I might have forgotten to give you my email on the last page. I can’t remember because I was distracted by those deals that I can’t get in the local store.

10. Spelling and grammer is optiounal. It’s ok to missspell words often. We know you were are in a rush to get yer site up to show us those them productless adds, and just didn’t have time to recheck everythink.

Bonus Tips

11. Make sure on your FAQ page that you list the top ten most frequent questions that nobody asks. Better yet, just list the top 5. And don’t ever make a site map. You wouldn’t want anyone to actually try to find something on your site that couldn’t be answered by your FAQ page.

12. Some sites gain about 40% purchases because they subscribe to hacker safe certification and display the logos. Certification is not necessary, no point in trying to show that you care about a customers information.

13. Don’t forget to use thumbnail pictures only for all of your products. People really don’t care what it looks like, they are willing to just throw money at what ever they see. Wait – your objective is Not to sell. So why even bother with a thumbnail?
And the Double Bonus tips

14. Don’t bother listing a price. Pricing on websites should be banned anyway. That leads to price shopping and comparison of features and benefits. You really don’t want the visitors to know the price until the very last minute.

15. Leave off the Buy Now button. They take up space, and it actually looks crummy having the Buy Now button on several key positions on your web pages.

Well, that should be enough to keep 99.9% of the visitors away. For the last visitors that are true diehards and just won’t go away, maybe you should try an under construction page. If none of the above will chase them away, then this one will do it every time.