If a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear?  If a man says something, and there is no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?  These are life’s great questions, but do you know that the visitors to your website might well be screaming at the screen and you can’t hear them because you’re not within earshot and you haven’t bothered listening to their feedback.

I am absolutely convinced that if every webmaster who had just launched a new site spent the first six months of the site’s life sitting beside every single visitor who came to their website that the web would be revolutionised.  Over those six months, people who design and build websites would come to realise that what is important to their customers is very different to what is important to them.

Have you ever considered that your website might be making its visitors scream?  Why is it that despite starting out with the best of intentions (having a state of the art website) people can get it so wrong?  There are pitfalls everywhere and every one of them comes from looking inward rather than looking outward.

Pitfall 1. Web managers become yes men and say yes to every internal department.  The CEO asks if he can put a welcome message on the home page?  Yes.  The Personnel Director asks if she can put latest jobs on the home page?  Yes.  Your marketing people want the newest communications campaign featured on the home page?  Yes.  For your site to be effective your web manager must have the power to say no, otherwise your website will become a shrine, worshipping your business, rather than serving your customers.  If you try to serve everyone you will serve no one.

Pitfall 2. People forget what it’s like to be a user on the web.  Somehow people who are making decisions for their own website lose sight of how they themselves use the web and lose focus on the priorities.  What are the priorities for your website?  Do you know for sure that they are the same as your customers priorities?  If your priorities for your website are not quick download, easy navigation, relevant content and regular updates then you are out of step with your customers.  How much time have you devoted on your last web project to these things?  Independent research tells us they are central to your customers – have you given them the same importance?

Pitfall 3. Businesses look at a competitors website and say “we’ll have one of those but better!”  If that is your approach you will end up with a website which your MD loves, your Marketing Director wants to take to bed, your competitors get jealous about, and your customers will hate.  Since 1998, the most successful online organisations have realised that the secret to web success is concentrating on customers not competitors, otherwise your website will become self important irrelevance.

Pitfall 4. Organisations ignore their customers.   They don’t talk to them, don’t consult them, don’t listen to them, don’t review their feedback on your site.  You do that, and your website will be redundant in months, if it isn’t already.  Just today I was on a website, trying to find out train times and costs to get to Croke Park for the upcoming rugby internationals.  The train times, costs, and payment options were at least two clicks away from each other.  You could only review the time options AFTER selecting “buy now”.  I was screaming at the screen.  Sure, the graphics were pretty, and the “brand” was reflected in terms of colour and design, but no one in that organisation had put themselves in their customers shoes, asking “how easy is it for our customers to find the train they want and book it online?”

This is crucial to the success of your website.  You want to sell more to your customers and instead they are screaming and swearing at the screen.  Make sure that you put yourself in your customers shoes, give your web master the clout to say no, and make sure you listen to your customers if you want to enjoy online success.  These things, above all else, will drive the success of your business on the web; don’t get caught in the indulgences or excesses of the web’s ego – all that glisters is not gold.