Spotted Wombat

I work online a lot. If it weren't for websites and emarketing, I probably wouldn't have a job (not one that I enjoyed as much, anyway). It still amazes me when I find awful websites that make me want to run away from my computer. Poorly written web content, cheesy music and flashing rainbows are not going to encourage anyone to stay on a website.

Anyone can design a website, right? Even MS Word has some basic web templates available for download. You might ask yourself: Why would I pay thousands of dollars for someone to create my website, when I can do it myself?
 
You could ask similar questions like: Why do I pay someone to do my tax returns? OR Why do I employ a garden service?
 
The reason that you would pay someone to create your website for you is because you want a professional, modern and active website. We call it an active website - a website that encourages conversations between you and your customers. An active website changes; it has regular content updates and draws heavily on content marketing and calls-to-action to engage with your clients.
 
By all means - if you have the time, energy and SEO content knowledge - design your website yourself. Before you do, though, we've composed a short list of ways to watch your website die. Please do yourself (and the rest of the internet community) a favour and read this before you decide to have an animated bird flying across your web page!
 
7 Ways to Kill Your Website...
 

1. Use neon colours on a black background
2. Use lots of different fonts in different sizes
3. Have a large "WELCOME" sign across most of your Home Page
4. Use animation to feed words or pictures from one side of your screen to another
5. Insist that the user listens to your cheesy music
6. Give us 3 pages of your company history before telling us what you do
7. Make us guess what it is you're selling

 
There you have it. Do the above 7 things and rest assured, your website will die. RIP.
 

Let me know if you have any other "killer" traits for websites!