Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful images or a flash animation with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty roses with poisonous thorns. Don't let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Remember that you have 3 seconds to grab the attention of your visitor with your offer. Don't blow it on a splash page.
2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements
Even the least internet savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. We're constantly bombarded with all sorts of spam and advertisements in our daily lives; don't contribute to the same phenomenon on your website. You'll lose your visitor quicker than an avalanche. Provide more valuable content and relevant resource links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.
3) Have a simple, clear and easy to use navigation
Never place your content more than 3 levels deep in your website. You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu. The best analogy is to "childproof" your website navigation.
Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. The easier your navigation menu is the more pages your visitors will navigate you and the more sales you'll inevitably rack up.
4) Have a clear indication of where the user is
Users easily get lost after navigating more than 5 pages within any website so it's crucial that you help them locate where they are on every page in relation to your home page or main section of your website. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means next site!
5) Avoid using audio on your site
If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website and on and on and on. See that was very annoying wasn't it? If you must have audio, make sure they have some control over it - volume or muting. Another great option is have a small non-looping audio clip on your home page that doesn't repeating on subpages.
