6 Ways To Lose A Customer In 30 Seconds Or Less

1. Waste Their Time

Let me bottom line it for you: When someone visits your website, you have a few precious seconds to capture their attention, and then do something valueable with it. Treating their attention with anything but the utmost respect is clearly an unhealthy and foolish thing to do.

2. Confuse Them

"A confused mind says 'NO'". It's true. When a person is confused, or in any way doesn't know what to do, you have completely lost their trust and patronage. Too many choices, useless crap flying around the screen, too many hoops to jump through... if it's not plain-jane easy and simple to understand, you might as well give it up.

3. Act Like You Think You're Funny

No, really. Go on. That joke that you and your buddies have been passing around for years makes sense to everybody. They'll laugh, and then they'll buy your stuff... really... Actually, that couldn't be further from the truth. The brutal honesty is that only a few select people on this planet are as funny as they think they are... and, newsflash: you're not one of them.

4. Talk Their Ears Off

For some reason, some people think that if they just keep on talking, eventually people will buy their product - probably just to get them to shut up. If it takes you more than 10 seconds to introduce your product, you're wasting their time (See #1 above).

5. Show Them Something Completely Unrelated

If you're selling a Gizmo, and showing a Whatchamacallit, chances are you're violating rules 1 and 2... possibly 3... and if you keep talking about it, rule 4... not to mention this rule...

6. Try To Sell Using A Free Service

Every so often I see this, and I can honestly tell you from experience that it's a bad idea. If you're selling something on your website, do not use a free video service to do so. Nothing screams "Cheap" or "Scam" louder than that. Quite shameful, too.