Nine  years - - that's how long I have been making a full-time living on the Internet. In fact, I was an 'Internet Marketer' waaaay before most people knew anything about the Internet.  A lot has changed online in the last nine years.

But sadly, one thing has remained the same.  MOST business websites (Not SOME but MOST) are about as effective as screen doors on a submarine.

Why?

Because MOST web designers couldn't market themselves out of a paper bag.

NOTE: There is a world of difference between creating fancy looking sites (9 times out of ten just $100 templates bought from the USA and sold to Australian business owners for thousands of dollars) and knowing - really knowing how to market them.

Ask your web designers: "Have YOU generated MILLIONS of dollars in sales for your clients?" If not and YOU want to see spectacular results from YOUR website - keep moving and keep asking until you find someone who has.

SIDEBAR: Please forgive a blatant promotion here: I have.

With that in mind, lets just quickly consider five specific signs that your website TOTALLY sucks:

1. It doesn't make you any money. Look it really doesn't matter how fancy your new flash header graphics are. It doesn't matter if all your mates at the local pub think your new website looks like the next best thing since sliced bread. If it ISN'T making you any money - it sucks.

FACT: Fancy graphics dont sell. Words sell. Your message sells.

2. It doesn't get any traffic. Please note that "hits' mean absolutely NOTHING. The ONLY statistics that matter are 'Unique Visitors' So you should TOTALLY ignore the term 'Hits' it is geek speak used by web design firms to impress people who don't know better.

3. If it does get traffic - it doesn't convert that traffic into sales. I spoke with a NSW business owner the other week who was (to use his own words) "Pouring money down the drain" on Internet advertising - sending people to his homepage and getting no results.

I asked to see his site.

My heart sank.

The sales copy was sooooo boring it couldn't have convinced his own Mother to buy him a loaf of bread if he was starving!

There was no Offer. No Free Report. No Videos. No Newsletter.

Iadvised him to cancel his advertising campaign immediately until these BASIC issues were addressed. 

The really sad thing is that  the so-called 'Advertising Professionals' who were overseeing his Adwords campaign had failed to mention any of these things! Shame! Shame! Shame!

4. It is a 'Static' site. Sorry but the days of the static site are dead and gone. Who do you know that watches black and white TV? Who do you know that reads black and white magazines?  With sites like YouTube getting HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of unique visitors a month, ANY web designer that tells you:

"You don't need video" or worse, wants to charge you an arm and a leg to create an online video for you is either ignorant or lazy.

5. No SEO.  Whenever I speak to people who have a website but are doing NOTHING about making it search engine friendly, I always think of the words from the Shiniah Twain song:

Ok, so you got a car… (could read: OK, so you got a website…)

That don't impress me much!

Ok, so what do you think… you're Elvis or something…
That don't impress me much!

Now, can I tell you a sneaky trick that some web designers use?

They build you a website and then tell you that "We can make it search engine friendly for you for a few thousand dollars a month"

Here is a really novel idea: Why not create sites that are basically search-engine-friendly to begin with? I'd like to see that!