Having a conversion focused web page is one of the most important building blocks of a successful post-click marketing program. In addition to be conversion focused, all campaign web pages should be relevant, fluid, measured and analyzed. Here Rich Page, whom I met at Conversion Conference, tells us 20 important conversion reducing mistakes to avoid.

Hopefully you are trying to optimize your website already. And you may be trying to improve your website conversion rates by focusing on major things like optimizing your shopping cart, registration pages or homepage. Great job!

However, while these major things can have a great impact on improving conversion rates, often too little emphasis is placed on the smaller things that need fixing. Not paying attention to these common website mistakes can often play havoc on your conversion rates, the happiness of your website visitors and whether they return in the future.

Here are 20 conversion reducing mistakes to avoid:

1. Use the full version of your website on a mobile device, even if it takes a long time to load or becomes difficult/impossible to use this way.

2. After your visitor arrives on your website from a paid search ad, show them nothing to do with the ad they just clicked on.

3. Use pop-up windows that are hard to close and stay in the center of the screen while graying out the rest of your content.

4. Confuse your visitors by making your text hyperlinks look the same color as your regular bold text.

5. Make it very hard to find your shipping returns or product guarantee policies.

6. Don’t check what your website looks like in all major browser types, and have it break in one of them.

7. Make use of website advertising interstitial pages (and worse still, show one of these on the page the visitor arrives on).

8. Show that web chat is available, and after a visitor clicks it say its not available and ask them to send an email instead.

9. Don’t offer an FAQ section or support forums on your site.

10. Make use of hard-to-read long paragraphs of text that have no usage of bold or bullet points.

11. Offer no way for your visitors to filter and sort on search results or browse pages.

12. Pop-up a ‘Can I help?’ web chat window just because a visitor stays on a page for a few brief moments.

13. Make it mandatory for a visitor to register before they can view content on your website.

14. Make use of rich media banner ads that expand and cover up site navigation, and then make it really hard to close them.

15. Create marketing promotions and banners that flash or distract the visitors eye too much.

16. Have confusing navigation menus with too many options and vague descriptions.

17. Make it really hard for your visitors to find your companies phone number.

18. Have auto-play video or audio below the page fold that visitors can’t see immediately, and then can’t easily turn off.

19. Don’t offer an internal search tool box on your website, or hide it away.

20. Only offer one image of your product, with no ability to zoom in or rotate it.

If you are guilty of any of these on your website currently, you need to stop and fix them immediately. Doing this will make your website visitors happier and help to increase the conversion rates on your website

What would you add to this list of awful things to put your web visitors through?

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