Whether you run a blog, a website, or build a sales page, you certainly want people to either subscribe to your mailing list, rss feed, or simply buy your products or the products you’re promoting.

But some folks seems to put to much emphasis on flashy graphics, annoying ads and animated stuff, like overwhelming animated gifs, floating ads, pop-ups, or interstitials, and the likes. It can get pretty annoying, and actually make people click away from your page (in my opinion), which is something you don’t want! You want them to stay on there, read more, participate, and potentially buy (provided you actually have something to sell)!

Here’s my “not” to-do list:

I wonder if that works well, i never tried it, but i hate those! I have a pop-up blocker enabled, so that probably means i don’t want any pop-up! So why is it that i’m annoyed by floating stuff that is displayed on the page itself instead of another window then? Even if it’s to inform me of a super special offer, i don’t want to know about it, i just don’t ! With floating ads you can have a pop-up thing that’s not actually a pop-up but more like a little (or big!) advertisement window or “subscribe to my mailing list” form, that pops-up right on the actual page, instead of opening a new browser window. Hate those!

We all find them annoying, period. Why is there still people using them? Is there any money to be made from pop-up windows, or pop-unders? Most surfers have a pop-up blocker enabled, so it’s no use, but even if they don’t have that pop-up blocker on, what are the chances they’ll enter their name and e-mail in a form that’s in a pop-up window…umm…

That is fine with me, but make sure you don’t put too much emphasis on the graphics of your site. First it will slow down the loading of your page, and second it’s flashy, and may take the focus away from the actual content of your site! Unless you want them to check out that new flashing banner, or that animated gif, you don’t want to use too much flashy stuff on your site. Unless you just finished a really nice flash animation, that is way fine (and you can be proud!), cause it’s artsy and it looks good.. but forget about the animated gifs! (take a look at myspace and tell me you like to see flashy stuff? I bet you don’t!)

Every thing else is fine by me! Just don’t over do things! If you wanna make your site or blog sticky , forget about the flashy stuff!:)

Even if you’re writing and designing a sales page, you don’t need any of those anyway! If you’re paying for your traffic you certainly don’t want people to click away from your page, you want them to read the whole thing, and buy!