Online marketing ‘mistakes’ revealed by expert

An online marketing expert has revealed a list of actions which he says marketing professionals should always avoid.

Forcing immediate registration, having a long web address and unreadable confirmation codes are three of the no-go areas for websites, according to Guy Kawasaki, writing for bMighty.com.

Explaining his views on user registration, he comments: “Requiring a new user to register is a reasonable request - after you’ve sucked him in. The sites that require registration as the first step are putting a barrier in front of adoption.”

Long URLs are also a mistake, he argues, because a line break may be added when users paste them into emails, meaning the link does not work.

And on the issue of confirmation graphics, Mr Kawasaki said that while they are generally a good thing, unreadable ones are certainly not.

Writing for the Econsultancy blog, Graham Charlton recently stressed that the button which sends items to the user’s basket should be well designed.

He argued that it will attract the maximum number of clicks if it stands out from other elements on the webpage.