Visitors are what make the internet go round and make sales for online retail sites as well. Every site or at least most, want more visitors. One of the best ways to do that is to make the environment as easy to get around in as possible and provide the visitor with the content they want quickly. Having said that leads naturally to the topic of visitor unfriendly web site design mistakes.

Even the experts in website design can fail occasionally and though an idea sounds good, it might look good to the designer, it is not visitor friendly and your sales and traffic statistics should let you know very quickly if you have violated one of these taboos that drive visitors away faster than the search engines can bring them. Though most experienced web design companies know to guide the website owner away from some of these mistakes, the owner attempting their own design may well stumble.

Do not lock your visitors in. You would not bar the door at a retail site if a visitor entered, most would get nervous seeing the staff run to the door and lock it. When a website takes control of a browser and disables the back buttons, resizes the windows or in any other way impedes the visitor’s movements you just barred the door. Once they leave, and they will find a way leave before buying, they likely will not return.

Do not put blinders on your visitors. In a retail store, it would be unthinkable for you to grab a pair of dark glasses and put them on the visitor in order to force them to sign up for a catalogue. Yet it has become common on the web to have flash popups, which obscure the content the visitor is searching for until they input an email, watch an ad or some other desired action. You will not make many sales by trying to force the customer in a given direction, respect your visitors.

Easy to use navigation may be a lot more favorable for sales than flashy scrolling menus. Beware too many “extras” they may look like the latest thing but all too often they hinder navigation and no one wants to keep a visitor from the sales page.

Check your links be sure they lead where you think. If you have a site that provides information on various topics or sells a number of different items then it can happen links are switched. If a visitor clicks on a link that should lead them to a page selling pet products, and instead leads them to a page dedicated to information on us immigration forms, us citizenship exam and USCIS information, the chances are your visitor will not only be confused but may have no way to find the items they wanted.

While there are many more errors that lay in ambush for the novice in website design, most site owners manage to avoid the worst of these and encourage that hard won traffic to remain on their sites and return to buy.