Avatar's Blog

In recent years, everybody from middle school children to their grandparents has learned at least something about who to trust, and who to avoid, on the internet. While a great number of people are still fooled by spammers and fraudsters, the general population is becoming increasingly informed - and thus skeptical - of internet advertising and content.
Many reputable organizations undoubtedly sabotage their own success by producing awful content online. When you're on the production end of an internet advertising campaign, you should remember what you consider to be "red flags" and avoid committing these offenses yourself. As obvious as this sounds, it is incredible how many people still employ tactics that scream of illegitimacy. Although everyone has different tastes and levels of tolerance, here are a few things that, when displayed on computer screens, say little more to a user than "Get out of this page now."

One:

WRITING IN ALL CAPS is a very good way of saying "I have nothing important to say, so I'm going to shout, in hopes of someone hearing me. Multiple words that are entirely capital letters also tend to sound toneless and monotonous to the person reading them: Think of a person bellowing at you without any intonation in their speech. Annoying, isn't it? If you want your writing to pack a punch and be remembered, write something worth remembering. It's best to avoid using all caps completely, and if you think a passage need emphsis, using italics is less intrusive.

Two:

Incorrectly spelled words. None of us are walking dictionaries, and I am an atrocious speller; however, would you really post a billboard on a street corner in a busy city without spell checking it first? Also, despite the fact that everyone misspells words, publishing these mistakes makes an author look unintelligent and careless.
Glaring grammatical and stylistic errors. Not many people in your audience will be scholars of linguistics and grammar, or will know the intricate rules of semi-colons, but most people can spot the more obvious errors, such as randomly placed apostrophes, excess use of "..." and the omission of full stops. Also, simply running your text through a spell checker is rarely good enough, as the computer will not notice that you've written "there" when "their" or "they're" should have been used. Think that no one in a marketing niche would make this error? I have seen it numerous times and it always eats away at a writer's credibility.

Three:

Hideous social networking pages. I came across one commercial loan company's MySpace entry that played the song "Take The Money And Run" when a user opened the page. Another loan company had a poppy Top 40 song to play to visitors. Although the first page was probably trying to be funny and the second was trying to be hip, using music on any webpage, including MySpace, is a bad idea. Additionally, taking advantage of some social networking sites' HTML allowances in order to splash pretty pictures all over a page is a bad idea. It looks tacky and unprofessional.

Four:

Too much large/bold/underlined font. There is a saying in the newspaper industry about having information "above the fold." This refers to the content that people can see on the front page when the paper is folded in half. The same term now applies to web pages. Although different computers and different browsers show varying amounts of a page, what can be seen without scrolling is known as being above the fold. Having a dozen large, bold and underlined headings above the fold is as good as having no text at all. Users do not read the text, they just try and find something to look at that doesn't resemble spam. If this spammy text is all that's avaiable, the "Back" button will be looking like most clickable option.

Five:

Excessive color. Even though your color options appear to be infinite, you should not attempt to incorporate every color from fuchsia to lime green into your site. It is also amazing how many people know that green, gray and yellow don't look good together, but who still slap them next to each other on a webpage.

Six 

Big and/or numerous advertisements. If you need to run ads in order to sustain a business, try to avoid having the ads take over your page. Also, too many Google-provided ads will make your site look like a dime-a-dozen directory.

Often, financial companies and cut-price law firms are the major offenders in the realm of bad websites, so if you're in either field and can produce a nice page, you're already ahead.

Of course, everyone can add more to this list, such as annoying flash introduction sequences, but do make sure to stay away from the heavy-weight mistakes listed here. Your online reputation depends on it!