3 Must-Avoid Onsite Web Marketing Practices

Posted by Laura Bergells

July 18, 2007

I visited a dozen different business sites yesterday, only to have the following happen:

A “slider” ad travelled across the page, obliterating what I was reading. Annoyed, I left immediately.
A “voice” started talking while I was reading. So unexpected, I about jumped out of my chair. I abandoned the site.
My “popup blocker” clicked about 6 times, warning me of a plethora of negated pop-ups. I never saw the content.

When I’m trying to absorb written information, I do not want extraneous, unexpected information and noise! The sites I visited already had my interest and attention — but then chose to interrupt their message with other messages — so I never had a chance to absorb much of anything!

I had arrived: I was there! I had travelled the tricky tributaries of many internet marketing channels to arrive at these sites. And yet, once I had arrived, these sites acted as if I wasn’t interested in what they had to say. They kept interrupting themselves, trying to get my attention — however, they already had my attention!

These sites missed an opportunity. What if they had engaged me with thoughtful written content? And after I was suitably impressed, they might suggest –

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– how much more likely would I have been to take a positive action? Instead of interrupting me, they had an opportunity to engage me. They missed an opportunity to intelligently or emotionally persuade me to take another action to further the relationship.

If you have someone’s interest and attention, how much sense does it make to use techniques that interrupt your own message?