Your visitors are your most important Internet asset. Without visitors, you don't have buyers, and without buyers you don't have a business.

But visitors are a fickle beast. Somewhat like a cautious mouse - always sniffing and nosing about, but at the first sign of trouble off they scamper.

Your web site could be littered with tiny little signs that are causing hundreds of visitors a week to simply close their browser window on you. At the first sign that you are untrustworthy your visitor will be clicking off elsewhere. This could be costing you a serious loss of revenue.

1) Hype and Over Sell Don't hype it up Too Much. Always keep to an appropriate tone, always keep it believable. If it becomes over-hyped, people will soon dismiss your venture, and there goes your customer.

2) Avoid mis-typez, spelling errors and sloppy grammar. These are all potential signs that your product is also shabbily put together. If you haven't taken the time with your web site, who's to say that you have taken the time developing your product?

3) Missing Elements. Missing graphics and dead links give the impression that you might be going out of business, or that you don't care. It looks like your site hasn't been maintained…and if this is the case, your customer is immediately going to be concerned about the product and after sales service.

4) Last Updated July 1997. Never put a text line on your pages that says "last updated xx July 1997". This will always give the impression that your site is old…even if it was updated two weeks ago. If you carelessly forget to update that line (it happens) visitors may not bother to look any further because they think that it is dated information. Worse still visitors may believe that you are out of business because it has been so long since you changed the content.

If it is important that your visitor knows that the information is completely up to date, then ask your developer to use some JavaScript code to automatically write in the current date every time the page is loaded.

5) Still Under Construction. There is no need to put an "under construction" sign. Every single web site out there is under construction. You are also sending the visitor the impression that you are not ready for their sale yet…this is very much the wrong signal to send.

6) You Are Visitor Number 123. Hit counters on your page are unprofessional. You don't want anyone knowing they are only the 123rd person visiting that page. It makes you look small and unpopular, again not a good signal to send out.

7) Multi Award Winning Site? Forget about small unknown web site awards. There are soooo many on offer now that it is meaningless…who cares! If it is a well known, prestigious award, or if it matters to your target audience, then go for it. Otherwise don't waste the bandwidth sticking some logo up there.

This is only one of hundreds of original Internet Marketing articles that can be found in Work the Medium. The 200 + page book is divided into sections on Online Selling Strategies, Web Design and Navigation, Marketing Your Web Venture and Building Serious Traffic, Secrets to Search Engine Success, and Affiliate Marketing: The Ultimate Online Sales Force.