A customized website developed for you–and you only–will be the only way you can achieve sufficient branding and differentiate you from an over crowded market.

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Putting weather reports on your (travel) site is a bad idea for several reasons:

1. It distracts the visitors on your site from the main objective which is to call you to book a room.
2. It may invariably send the visitors off your page to an actual weather page (since most weather reports are scripts embedded into your site).
3. Most importantly, when  people are looking to book a trip somewhere they are mostly likely (I’d say 98%) are in good spirits and are thinking good thoughts.  You do not want them to think twice about your destination by seeing a negative weather report on your site. 

In sum, a weather report will usually hurt your conversion rate rather than help.

When I booked my trip to Hawaii, the last thing I thought about was rain. I had images of sunny beaches, cocktails and so forth.  If I knew there would be rain, I might have thought twice about making my holiday plans.

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I get a lot of calls from people who have a great idea and want a website but they really don’t want tell me this great idea (for which I need info to develop or even discuss their website).  First and foremost, congratulations on your great idea; but its usefulness is only to you and maybe to the 0.0000001% of people you will encounter.  In other words, no one is going to take the few words you say about your idea and suddenly run with it.

If your concept is truly a good idea, only you know how it will function, who the target market is and how to develop the process.  There were plenty of MP3 players out there before the iPod.  Was that a great idea that someone could turn with just a few words?  No, the iPod is a product backed by a series of decisions

Secondly, you are telling a web designer, not some intellectual property stealer.  In other words, we (web designer) are in the business of developing website, not stealing intellectual property.

I recently had someone call me about an idea about a website which was about baby sitting schedules.  The conversation is somewhat in-depth, but when they gave me the written outline (which was scribbled in notebook paper, scanned and then e-mailed), it was in some type of code—which I could not understand.  The babysitter was now the “said client” and all sorts of jargon to hide what was really going on.  Even knowing the background of the project (from our initial phone conversations), I could not make heads or tails of the project based on the cryptic outline I received through the e-mail.  I quickly passed on the project. I’m still not going to steal it.  It’s a good idea, but a web designer is not a baby sitter scheduler entrepreneur.

In sum, don’t get in the way of your great idea.  If you really have doubts about divulging the secrets of your great website idea, then ask to see the web designer in person and develop a trust with that web designer over several meetings.  Don’t try to get interested web designers over a phone call and a cryptic e-mail.  The only ones you will get that are interested in your project just may be the one will steal your project.

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When developing your website try to avoid gimmicky things like, Virtual Spokesmen.  When you use these gimmicks it says to your customer that you are grasping at straws and you will do anything to get new businesses. It really looks cheap and shoddy.

Please do not miss-interpret my intentions here. I am not saying that a Virtual Spokesman is a bad idea in part, but the fact these Virtual Spokesmen are new and fresh, it is gimmicky and should be avoided.  When the rest of the world is using Virtual Spokesmen in a serious and positive manner (and become more mainstream), then and only then you should use these types of devices on your website.

So, what about being new and innovative?  What about blazing a new trail?  If it’s easy, it’s gimmicky.  And if it’s gimmicky, you are not blazing a new trail.  You are just following—what everyone else is doing.  All it says is that you are not creative and got suckered by some salesman that convinced you it is a good idea.

Does anybody remember “Tell A Friend”?  Where are these links now?  I admit, I had this on my website (many years ago) but I realized it was gimmicky and pointless.  I also, considered that if I wanted anyone to tell their friend about my website, they could easily (and quite possibly easier) tell their friend by other means such as e-mail or instant chat.  In the end it was quite a gimmick.

Gimmicky things such as virtual spokes-person might jeopardize your credibility.  I’m not saying these virtual spokespeople will never be a good idea, but now it is a knee-jerk gimmicky idea.  You should wait.

In sum, try to be as original a possible.  That’s why you got in the business you are in.  You are trying to tell the people out there tat you do whatever it is do better and differently than everyone else.  Copying gimmicky techniques will not help.

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Don’t fall into the trap of “making money on the internet”.  Ask anyone running a legitimate business online—either solely an internet business or an online version of their brick and mortar store—they will tell you that it’s nearly a full time job to run the online business.  It’s not a passive pursuit where you kick back and watch the money roll in.

I get many calls from people wanting to develop an online business as a “side business.”  It’s not impossible but very, very tough.  And many times they fall into the trap of selling ads on their website with the thinking that it will be easy passive income–even if it only turns out to be few hundred dollars a month¹.  (Don’t get me started on what it takes for people to actually get to your site and everything else that’s involved in generating that “passive income.”  That’s another article.)

I recently got a call from a young man who wanted to create a website, so he could sell Google Ads.  This always sends off warning bells in my head because it tells me that the person is really just grasping at straws and looking at the whole internet backwards. 

To start, you first should have a great site that gets lots of traffic before trying to sell ad space.  That’s usually how it works—especially in the off-line world.  Any advertiser is going to ask what your numbers are: meaning how many people read your publication, what the target market is and so on.  However, with Google Ad Words and Ad Sense, much of that has changed².

Without having an existing website, my phone caller wanted to have one developed, so to sells ads (GoogleAds).  No matter what his idea was, I knew it was not going to be good because of this backwards thinking.  Anyway, when he told me he wanted to showcase Windows Paint images, I just cut him off at the pass and told him that I was unable to do his project and kindly cautioned him about the pitfalls of “making money on the internet.”

I have dozens of examples of people who have called me with this type of backwards thinking.  If you read other articles you may find I have brought up those examples from time to time.  It is a common theme.

1. To even make a few hundred dollars a month on many online ad programs, it takes a lot of click-throughs,–somewhere in the tens of thousands.  Each click will only be a few pennies.  Do you have that much traffic?
2. The special novelty about Google Ads (as part of Google’s AdSense program) is that they (Google advertisers) do not care how much traffic you get because the ads are not paid for until someone clicks on the ad.  This is not a piece about Google Ads and how they work, but this prospect wanted to sell ads on a website not yet developed.  This is all backwards thinking.

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