Trying to gain some traction on your website? Well, it might help to de-junk.

If you’re looking for quick ways to give your site a lift, start off with some good old purging, and make sure your site isn’t committing one of our five cardinal signs below.

Five Things you Don’t Want on Your Website

Stock Photography

We know; stock photography is easy, accessible, and cheap. But that’s why that photograph is everywhere. Think about it – do you really want your hip, stylish blonde fashion model to be seen elsewhere as a paralegal or medical assistant?

Stock photography is pretty easy to spot and takes away from the overall originality and style of the site. If you think you can’t afford some custom photography, you might be wrong – you’d be surprised what kind of talent you can find on a contract or freelance basis.

Anything NONcurrent

What do both search engines AND potential customers hate? Outdated information. There’s nothing more annoying than searching for current information, dates, rates, etc., on a website and finding only evidence that a business doesn’t care one bit about updating their site.

Noncurrent information just tells your customers that you don’t take your site (or your customers) seriously, and/or that you’re not currently doing events, shows, etc.

Clipart

What’s worse than stock-photography? Clip-art. Ugh. Hello! 1994 word processor called and wants it’s little animated telephone back.

Auto-loads

You know what will keep people from casually perusing your website? Music or videos that won’t shut up.

There’s nothing worse than hearing annoying music or looping videos that you can’t seem to shut off. Never make music or video an automatic element of your website.

Videos are great marketing tools – but let your customer control them; they’ll thank you for it.

Blah Blah Blah

In an age of content marketing, you need to make sure that your content isn’t out there just for the sake of, well, having content out there.

Make sure that each of your pages is created with useful, relevant, and quality content that is geared toward your specific audience.

Above all, make sure that your “About Page” and any company information throughout the site is clear, concise, and gives your customers clear calls to action.

Have a Website Pet Peeve?

Got a website pet peeve? Add to our list by commenting below.