1. The navigation is nearly impossible to follow. By this, I mean those sites that I see which have ten drop downs from one sub page. Really? There’s a word for that: CONSOLIDATE.

2. Blah, blah, blah content. Yeah, you’re super great and you have a super business.  It all started when you were born in 1955…..This is where I have to put my foot down. No one needs your entire life’s story on a website. What they want on a website is the information they are looking for.

Break down your most important content into three or four major chunks and go from there. Anything that is a revenue generator, or if you want leads to be converted into sales, you need to have a CTA (Call to Action) above the fold of the page. If you don’t see this on a site, you’re not going to get anywhere with a web visitor.

3. So, you just had a website done and it looks great on your Google Chrome browser. But, while at the beach in Cabo, you check your website on IE7 and it comes up like trash. WTF? This will tell you that whoever built your website didn’t test for compatibility amongst all the web browsers and all the different versions out there. That’s a no-no, and all that money you just laid out for your great looking website, can only be seen the way it was meant to be designed on only two browsers. That sucks.

4. No SEO. Anywhere. Especially if it’s a Flash made website, search engines do not read scripts. What search engines read are keyword terms within the content (off page and on page) of the website that matches closely to what the web visitor typed into the search engine toolbar. If you have no SEO, keywords in appropriate places (too many to list here), then your site pretty much sucks.

5. Are you socialized? Not saying you need manners or anything, but I’m referring to social media like Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, Google + and Pinterest.  Here’s the breakdown on how many minutes users use these social media outlets at home and at work (May, 2011…so you can bet your sweet patootie it’s gone up since then):

Linked In – 325,679 minutes

Twitter – 565,156 minutes

Tumblr – 623,525 minutes

Facebook – 53,457,300 minutes

Google +  – No data

Pinterest – No data, but I can bet it’s right up there with Twitter!!!

Needless to say, if you do have any social media on your site, it won’t draw additional traffic. That’s too bad for you and your business….plus the site sucks.

6. Analytics. Google Analytics is free. You can customize your “dashboard” to see any type of statistic you want from your website. This often tells you what you need to “tweak” on the website and/or specific pages to either get more traffic, or turn those leads into conversions. It’s Free!!!! What are you waiting for? Google gives you a snippet of code, and you can place it in the header section of your website. As long as you have a gmail account, that’s all you need.

There’s more in understanding what makes a website bad. I can talk your ear off about design and how people can ruin a website based purely on this basic principle. Bottom line is that there is alot to consider when building a website these days. Don’t tackle website design alone – it’s dangerous, people…..very dangerous.