Inappropriate use of colour and fonts

Use of advertisements plastered all over the pages

Too much use of flash and movies which take too long to load

Yes, I know some of these apply to my own site, which is why it is in need of a redesign (beautiful artist websites to the recue?).

Viridis & Christine – I did think about the point you both made prior to publishing the article. There is always a pro and a con to everything and this was no exception. The point of the teaser article (at least in this case) was not to get extra traffic but simply to encourage interaction and introduce the upcoming series.

We put a lot of effort and heart into publishing original content and in most cases readers just soak it up and then forget most of it a few hours later. But when there is interaction involved people actually remember some of it!

With this article we wanted to see what you thought prior to giving out the answers based on our experience. That’s why we included the “Can you guess” in the title and also the website review prize. We were doing our best to make it a win-win and encourage interaction. But your point is good – and we read you loud and clear!

Thanks again for your comments – we hope to hear from you again on other articles.

And Christine – your answer definitely covers 3 of the 5 mistakes so you win the $150 website review! I’ll email you a questionnaire in the next few days and then we’ll take a look!

Thanks again to all – Daniel.

It is one of the best ways to get potential customers to come back to your site – by offering a daily or weekly set of tips, instructions, how to’s, etc., but, yes, it is a good idea to offer the first tip in the first post!

Here are my answers –
Poor or no artist’s statement.

No way to buy the art or difficult to find how to buy the art. Difficult to buy the art – for example, the customer has to send a check or money order and can’t use a credit card to purchase. I think, maybe .0005% of people will actually send in a money order to buy something these days.

Poor navigation. Difficult to find your way around. Things that are most important are hidden or hard to get to.

Looks ugly – bad resolution of photos, bad representation of art. Amateur design.

Poorly written content, including spelling mistakes. Also having too little written content, thus, not allowing the search engines to see you.

Not showing a picture/video of the artist – this is a newly developed thing – customers need more than ever to see and even better, hear and watch who they are buying from to gain credibility.

Too many ads from other providers cluttering up the page. This usually happens with “free” web providers.

Using a free web provider and having a long url like:

http://www.jennifersmithartonline/freewebprovider/thisisafreewebsite/lookhowlong/this/url/is/theartistwhocreatedme/doesnotwanttospendmoneyonme/14332904823895748936346.com

No focus. I am slightly, well, fairly guilty of this, but, I’m so incredibly and magnificently multi-talented, I am not sure what to do in this realm.

Web site is poorly optimized for search engines. Badly created or no meta tags.

Annoying flash sequences/intros that can’t be skipped, thus denying your potential customer of the instant gratification they crave. Actually any annoying flash intro, even if it can be skipped.

Annoying music playing when you first arrive. You go ahead and love the music you want to, but very few want to hear it blaring into their life suddenly.

May you all experience 57.38 billion miracles today!
Creative Christine

If you’re going to tease viewers, give them SOME reward for clicking. A teasing link that only leads to another tease is not fair.