Having worked with web sites for the past eleven years, I’ve seen a LOT of errors, poor judgment and embarrassing gaffs on the web. Sometimes they are the fault of the client, the web designer, the IT Manager, or the SEO, but human error is always to blame. The saddest thing is that the problems are usually preventable.

Here is a list of what I consider to be the Top 10 dumbest web site decisions ever, in reverse order, David Letterman style :

10) Misspelling a Domain
Back in the glory days of the late 1990’s when I was working for a large Internet agency, the web designers had responsibility for the registration of domain names on behalf of clients. One particular designer had a face to face meeting with a major client, during which the client asked him to register CarTuneCentral.com (or so he thought!). The staffer did a check and was delighted to see the domain available. He made the purchase and proudly emailed the client.

An hour later his boss called him in to his office to say that he’d had a call from a very frustrated client who *actually* wanted him to register CartoonCentral.com. Needless to say the desired domain wasn’t available and the whole office dined on his mistake for months.

9) Letting the Domain Name Expire
Now what type of company would allow their domain to expire a month after site launch? A very large one, that’s who. I’ll save the company some embarrassment and won’t reveal their name but the site was offline for a total of 2 days while they scrambled to pay their registrar, sort out DNS propagation and cover their tails.

8) Flashing your Cyber Underpants
One of the most common web site management platforms provided by hosting companies used to store the site statistics in a common folder called /statistics/. You could password protect this folder, but the default was to leave it open to the public and so many unwary webmasters unwittingly published full traffic data for their site on the Internet, open to any person who knew where to look.

I learned this the hard way in a public forum from a member who said he had just reviewed my traffic for the previous month and was very impressed. Publishing site statistics for all the world to see is what I call flashing your cyber underpants and I’ve never let it happen again!

7) Publishing Sensitive Company Information
Quite a few companies have been guilty of doing this, including AOL, who published a search data report in 2006 that contained the private details of thousands of AOL customers. Although the report was taken offline within a few days, it had already been mirrored and distributed across the Internet. The fallout eventually led to the resignation of AOL’s Chief Technical Officer.

Although not quite as serious, an ex-client of mine once published a page that had notes on it from the Sales Manager about the best way to strong-arm a customer into purchasing a higher-ticket item. Apparently the web designer didn’t realize the hand-written post-it notes were not part of the web page copy. Duh!

6) Using an Insulting 404 Error Page
I clash with the web design team of one of my clients on a regular basis. Earlier this year, my client completely re-designed their web site and so I recommended they ask their web design team to design a custom 404 error page in case visitors navigated to a page on the old site that no longer existed.

Their web design team put up a message that read:

“404 Error. You’ve obviously typed in the wrong URL. Either that or the page you are looking for no longer exists.”

That was it! No apology for the missing page, no recommendation to use the navigation to find what they were looking for, just an insulting message that accuses the visitor of being an idiot. Persons viewing that page would be clicking the “back” button as fast as they could.

5) Taking a Site Offline for Maintenance
I find it fascinating that very large sites run by intelligent people still get taken offline for maintenance on a regular basis. Search engines don’t understand the “Back in 15 minutes” sign and the longer the site is down, the bigger the risk.

If search bots try and index a site while it is down, they will most likely assume the previously indexed pages have expired and remove them from the search index. This means that all your hard-earned rankings could be flushed down the toilet until search engines can successfully re-index your site. Surely a mirror site for maintenance periods isn’t that difficult to set up?

4) Buying a Dot Biz When the Dot Com Was Available
Ok, I’m putting up my hand on this one. I’m not going to reveal the domain but yes, I registered a dot biz domain back in 2000 when the dot com was actually available. The dot com version of my domain was bought by Yahoo a short time later and turned into a product site. Ack! My excuse is that, at the time, dot biz sites were rumored to be the next big thing and all companies were being urged to choose them over dot coms. Ok, I was wrong!

3) Allowing a Customer Complaint to Remain on a Site for 12 Months
When I was working as a public relations consultant, I was given the responsibility of re-writing the web copy of a large real estate client. One of the areas I was asked to re-write was the welcome paragraph on the Customer Feedback page where existing customers of the estate agent chain could login and leave comments about their experience.

While writing the copy, I scanned some of the customer feedback and came across an aggressive message left 12 months earlier by an obviously unhappy customer. She had used some of the most colorful language I’ve ever seen (and some that I hadn’t) and very detailed descriptions of how she was going to take her revenge on the company for allegedly allowing a tenant to destroy her house. Nobody in charge of the web site had even noticed the comment and I still wonder how many potential customers would have been put off from using the estate agent after reading it.

2) Switching a Web Site Off for a 3 Week Christmas Vacation
Yes, many moons ago, an ex-client of mine decided to take her entire web site offline (without telling me!) while she was on a 3 week vacation over Christmas. Only a month earlier, she had paid me $5,000 to optimize it for search engines.

It had just achieved some impressive top 10 results and all the carefully optimized pages were attracting good traffic when she shut it down and replaced the entire site with a 1 page sign that said “closed until after Christmas”. I noticed the traffic and search ranking declines in her stats and was completely flabbergasted when I found the site gone. Her response when I confronted her? “Why didn’t you TELL ME this could happen?”

And the dumbest web site decision I’ve ever witnessed?

1) Promoting a Domain Name You Don’t Own:
My Alma Mater, the University of Newcastle, have spent thousands of dollars on television advertising here in Australia, marketing their new site for online post-graduate coursework: GradSchool Dot Com. There’s only one problem. The domain for this site is actually Gradschool.com.au. They don’t even own Gradschool.com!

Sadly, this glaring marketing error seems to have totally escaped them and they are happily referring to their brand as Gradschool.com on all their marketing material and throughout their .com.au domain. It’s tragic to think of all the potential students typing in Gradschool.com expecting to find the University program. I see that whoever purchased Gradschool.com has slapped up some AdSense code on it so at least somebody will reap the benefits of those thousands of advertising dollars wasted by the University.

Don’t let any of these web site tragedies happen to you. Make sure that your site decisions aren’t in the hands of dummies!

By Kalena Jordan
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Remember back in the good ol’ days when having a website was something every company needed and wanted? Websites were the wave of the future, and the dream of transitioning to conducting business online filled our heads with visions of a revolution in the way commerce was conducted. With a website, a company could reach clients and interact with potential customers on a global scale. A website was indicative of a company’s technological prowess, symbolic of the desire to innovate and evolve with developments in the industry.

Today, this mindset has changed drastically. We all know that we need a website, but many of us think that simply having one is enough. In fact, there is research indicating that many firms with an online presence haven’t touched their websites in years. They haven’t spent any time improving functionality and appearance, and they have yet to consider the basics of website usability and the inherent potential of search engine optimization. Of course, we all recognize by now that having a website is an essential business asset, if it’s done correctly. It’s easy to see that if your site is an outdated eyesore, it becomes a liability that hurts you more than it helps you. Conversely, a well-designed site can make all the difference. It’s the first place users go to research your products and services, serves as a lead generator, a CRM tool, and even to make purchases.

We’ve all heard the adage about first impressions, and it’s no secret that they’re the most important factor in the way people remember their first encounter with you or with your website. On one hand, a well-designed, user-friendly website will showcase your business and your brand, impressing clients. On the other hand, an outdated and otherwise bad website can hurt you far more than it can help you. Potential customers will eliminate you as a possible vendor after interacting with your brand and substandard website for only a few minutes.

I’ll utilize a real estate analogy here to expand upon this thought. You’ll impress guests when they arrive at your home if it’s clean, well-kept, landscaped, painted, and overall welcoming. But, if you arrive at a home that’s dilapidated and falling apart with chipped paint and an overgrown lawn, you’ll think a lot of less of whoever lives there. Are they lazy slobs? Maybe. Or maybe they just haven’t had time to take care of the property. Either way, your first impression is less than positive. We all try not to “judge a book by its cover,” but in an online atmosphere, a company’s website is their cover, the digital face they present to the world, so in that case you can’t not judge the book by its cover. After all, that’s all you have to go by.

So this must leave you wondering: Is my website an asset or a liability? By answering the following questions, you can find out if it’s time for an overhaul or just some simple changes. Or maybe your site doesn’t need any work at all. Ready to find out?

  Home Page

• Can visiting users tell immediately who you are and what you offer?
• Is your site organized in a clear fashion that promotes navigation?
• Is your home page an information destination or just a messy landing page?
• Does your home page give a good first impression that entices users to click through your links? 

Performance Issues

• Do your images, videos, and pages load quickly?
• Does your site utilize clean, un-bloated code?
• Does your site have a “search” function? If so, is it fast and useful?
• Have you performed quality assurance testing to ensure your site looks the same across different browsers?

  Content Is King

• Is your content written clearly and persuasively? Does it speak to your target market?
• Have you included useful and relevant resources like case studies, white papers, articles, or links?
• Does your content effectively describe your products, services, and benefits?
• Is your content keyword focused to cater to users and search engines alike? 

  Links & Navigation

• First and foremost: Do all your links work?
• Are your links clearly marked?
• Do your links utilize descriptive and enticing anchor text?
• Is your navigation menu or framework consistent throughout your site?
• Does your navigation menu provide access to your entire site?

  Critical Pages

• Is there a top-level page that describes your products and services?
• Do you have an “About Us” page to describe your company?
• Is the “Contact Us” page clear, informative, and thorough?
• Do you have a page where users can ask questions or answer their own?
• Do you have a Testimonials section?
• Do you have a blog that you update frequently?
• Do you have social bookmarking buttons to take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies? 

  Usability

• Is your site organized so that information is easy to find?
• Do you have a site map that wireframes this organizational structure and links to all your pages?
• Is your site “user-friendly?”
• Is your type scannable, easy to read, and written for the web?
• Do you utilize bullets, headlines, and other stylistic elements to organize and present content?
• Do you have calls to action that prompt users to take desired actions?
• Are you using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to control the layout of the site?

  Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• Is your site search engine friendly?
• Have you optimized your site for specific and relevant keywords?
• Have you acquired a network of high-quality, relevant links?
• Have you utilized online PR or social media marketing for its SEO benefits?
• Does your navigation menu provide access to your entire site?

Now that you’ve answered all of these questions, you need to decide what to do next. Start with some competitve analysis to see what your competitors are doing and what you need to do to catch up. Then, survey users to see what they think and act upon that feedback; don’t wait, evaluate and reciprocate.

So make as many changes as you can to improve your website, turning it back into a business asset instead of a liability, and watch as your web presence creates leads and ultimately sales that impact your bottom line.

By Nick Yorchak
Nick Yorchak is an SEO expert and Search Engine Marketing Specialist at Fusionbox, a full-service Denver Internet marketing, web design, and web development company. He can be reached at his Fusionbox email (nyorchak@fusionbox.com) or at (303)952-7490.

I can hardly bring myself to say the old cliche about content being… well, you know. I think it’s one of the original cliche’s in the SEO industry. And as redundant as it has become, for whatever reason we keep hearing it over and over again. And every now and then a new study pops up seemingly proving, once again, that content is… uh, good. 

But much like a TV producer suggesting “video is king” or a radio advertiser demanding that “audio is king”, so goes the SEO demanding the same about content. Content has its role–and an important one at that, but it’s not the be-all, end-all of online marketing. Not even close.

But the roots of the “content is” movement are important for our industry. The mantra was first heard in the early days of the search engine optimization industry when SEOs were doing nothing more than throwing a bunch of keywords on a page and hoping they ranked well. Little or no thought or consideration was given to the readability of the web page. After all, it’s only rankings that matter, right? But those of us who learned to game search engines slowly began to learn something that those in the marketing industry have known for years. Words sell. Or turn people off, depending on what’s written and how it’s written.

So the movement to developing good content–real content–was an important one for our industry. But to get there we had to have the content mantra beat into our head over and over (and over). We got it. We know.

  The King is Losing His Grip on the Kingdom
But like any worthy cause, we’ve reached a point where the mantra has been used and abused to the point where we use whatever we can find to prove once again that content is… y’know, that. Take a recent study by OPA and Nielsen/ NetRatings that shows that Internet users are spending more time than ever on content based websites.

  Share of Time Spent Online

• Commerce: 13.8%
• Communications: 32.0%
• Content: 49.6%
• Search: 4.5%

That seems to confirm what many have been saying for years. Content is… uh, great for web marketing. And I’ve seen a few posts around the blogosphere and forums using this data to make that connection. The problem is, it’s not really there.

With the rise in popularity of blogs and social media sites it’s no wonder that more people spend their time reading online than anything else. While time reading and gathering information online has increased, time spent shopping has actually decreased, down over 2% from a year before. But does that tell us anything about marketing online? No, not really.

We know people like information and we know they like to communicate. We also know people like to shop and online shopping has continued to increase year over year. All this study suggests is what we spend most of our time doing on the web. Well, true enough, I don’t spend most of my time shopping.

Since when is it the goal of ecommerce sites to get people to spend a long time on their site? Isn’t it more important to drive shoppers to the sale and get the conversion? Step 1: Get traffic. Step 2: Keep visitors engaged. Step 3: Close the sale. That’s not necessarily a process that necessitates long periods of time spent on a site.

In no way do I want to diminish the importance of content on ecommerce websites. Having a database of information that helps visitors make their decision, helpful tutorials, etc. can improve your visitor’s overall experience and keep them coming back to your site. But the goal of all of that is to lead people to the sale.

  Community Killed Content and Stole the Throne
If I were to interpret this data I wouldn’t necessarily come away thinking content is… so very important. What I would conclude, however is that we need to build websites that meet a number of users needs. Adding more content to your ecommerce site is not the magic bullet. What is, however, is creating a great user experience and providing just the right amount of information and customer engagement that shoppers need to get to the conversion goal. That can be done through a number of means.

Many online stores are already paving the way by opening the door to ratings and reviews. Others are doing that by creating blogs to disseminate important and relevant industry information along with tips and tutorials. Still others do that by creating an information database that can visitors frequent to gain additional insights.

I might suggest that the best ecommerce websites are not those that build content around their products but build a community around the product interest. By creating a place where shoppers can come and gain information, learn more about the products and discuss or share information with others and then make purchases as well, will do more for sales than simply creating a shopping website.

By building a community you not only sell more products but you build brand recognition and customer loyalty. And both of those are worth far more than a single one-off sell. So while content may not be dead (not by a long shot, really), there is a new king in the online marketing industry. Long live community. Long live the (new) king.

By Stoney DeGeyter
Stoney deGeyter leads a spectacular team of seasoned marketing experts at Pole Position Marketing. Stoney started PPM in 1998 by finding the brightest minds in the industry and nurturing within them an intense desire to become leaders in their respective fields. With this team of professionals, he has built a wildly successful website marketing company that succeeds through both personal and professional integrity.