This is an excellent article about how some web sites make it very difficult for customers to give them money.

# 75: The percentage of those clicking the “forgot password” button that don’t come back to finish the purchase.
# 23: The percentage of those abandoning the checkout process at the first sign of a registration prompt.
# 45: The percentage of registered customers who have bad memories and register multiple times, some as many as 10 times, meaning sites requiring registration might have inflated data.
# 300 million: The number of lost dollars one major retailer found after taking away the registration button.

Read More: Stop Making It Hard For People To Give You Their Money | WebProNews

I have often had these thoughts as I surf through the web. Other things that make it hard for potential customers to give you their money are:

1. Intros - Any sort of entrance page adds an extra step to the purchasing process. Adding an extra step, anywhere, is a very bad idea.

2. Making it hard to understand what products or services your site offers - because we offer a free analysis of anyone's web site, we often get sent to sites where it is not immediately clear what it is that these people are selling. I've said it before and I'll say it a million times more, the web is about instant gratification. You have mere seconds to make an impression on your web site visitors. If, in those seconds, they cannot discern what it is you do, why would they stick around? You need to make sure you speak in everyday language as well as industry-specific jargon. Remember, not everyone is going to refer to your product or service the same way you do.

3. Making it hard to find out what geographical area you serve - If you are an online retailer that ships worldwide, you need to state that clearly and boldly on your front page. If you are a lawyer in Boise, you need to make it clear on your front page that you service Boise. So many web sites out there have no geographical information. I find that I often need to visit the contact pages and search for the area code listed in their phone numbers to find out where they are located.

4. If you absolutely must have some sort of registration process to make a purchase, think very hard about whether or not you need your customer's mailing address, phone number, or if password hint questions are really effective. If you're a bed and breakfast and you have a booking form, do you need to know where the people booking live? I'm sure once they're staying there, there will be ample opportunity to find out, but is it necessary to ask them in a booking form? If your web site offers a password retrieval process, why bother with a password hint question? Not only are they useless, but they make your password less secure as many people in our lives know the street we grew up on and what our mother's maiden name is. Making your registration forms longer is going to scare people away. Your forms need to be bare bones - only ask for information you need. The quicker your customer can get the process of giving you money over with, the more likely they will place the order.

These are just a few things that bother me, off the top of my head. I am a busy person, running a home business and taking care of my new baby boy. I don't have time to fill out my address on software sites when I purchase a piece of downloadable software. I don't need to figure out a hint question for a lost password when I purchase a $5 book. I usually hit the back button as soon as there is an intro page or music that loads with a page and I won't stick around very long so if you don't tell me what you do or where you are within the first second or two, you've lost a customer in me.

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