I was inspired by a post Seth Godin made this morning about being boring. And taking from his theme, your web site probably sucks, too.

Your web site sucks because it’s boring. It doesn’t do anything. It’s nothing more than an online version of your boring brochure.

Would you really expect someone to convert into a sale on your boring web site? Think about it. Imagine you’re a prospect. Now look at your web site. Why would you buy anything from your company?

The problem is, there are no easy solutions. You can’t just flip a switch and be un-boring. It takes a massive amount of effort and dedication to produce an exciting, conversion-crazy web presence.

But, the first step is to realize that your web site probably sucks. What are you going to do about it?

Small businesses have a particularly difficult time in determining exactly how their web site should be built. Central to this issue is how to make the site user-friendly. Most small businesses concentrate their web design efforts on just getting something up there. Unfortunately, this often leads to a confusing web presence that users have a hard time understanding and navigating.

Just "getting something up there" is the wrong approach. You have to think like the visitors who will be using your site and design for their needs.

So, how can you make your web site stronger by keeping user-friendliness and usability in mind?

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People are not too keen on admitting failure. We want to see things succeed and prosper, and we want to know that it was our contributions that led to that success. Nevertheless, failure is an essential exercise. To not fail is to not have accomplished anything.

With that said, I will admit that this blog failed.

I hope that got your attention, so let me clarify. The blog as a whole did not fail, but a critical element did. It’s not necessarily bad that it failed as I learned some important lessons that I’m going to share.

So, what failed? In January, I introduced a new weekly series aimed at homepage improvement. In the initial post, I laid out a plan for the series and announced that it would occur every week.

That didn’t happen.

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So, you’ve contracted with a company to build your web site. During the process, they go ahead and get a domain name for you so that you can have www.mycompany.com. The web site is finished and launched, perhaps flawlessly, and you’re good to go. Right?

Think again.

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Last week, one of our computers failed. One day it was working perfectly fine and the next day the motherboard was toast. Nothing on our end happened to cause this failure. It just happened.

Luckily, the hard drive wasn’t affected so no data loss occurred. But it really hits home when you realize how close you were to potentially losing important data.

That’s where disaster recovery planning comes into place. And it’s not just for your computer hard drive – it should, it must, be implemented for your web assets as well.

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All too often, a web site breaks one of the cardinal rules of web design: Don’t use Comic Sans as your font! Anywhere! Not only is this infamous font found on web sites, it also makes appearances in email signatures, and printed newsletters and brochures. Why is this font so dreadful?

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We’re all familiar with Flash – it’s the glitzy and literally flashy presentations and functions that have invaded the Internet. Flash may look nice, but used out of control, can cause some major usability issues. Take for instance the Flash splash page. These splash pages serve as the gateway to the homepage and try to force users to watch a clever animation describing what an organization does. Many hours go into preparing this splash page and the expectation is that it’ll drive visitors right into the web site, eyes wide and excited. The truth, however, is that visitors don’t like these splash pages. They’re annoying. They’re slow. And most importantly, they get in the way. You have a short time in which to catch a user’s attention. Flashy animations are too slow and cumbersome to achieve this goal. Unless the Flash serves to supplement content, you’re going to run into trouble. So always make sure your focus is on good content rather than flashy gimmicks.