5 Things Your Magic Website Must NOT Have

Last month we discussed the five things your website must have. This month, let’s do my favorite thing and ask ourselves, “what if we went the other way?” What things should not be on your website? You’ll likely disagree with some of the following advice, but I’m sharing it with you based on experience (mine and others).

1 – Price

The number one thing you should not have on your website is the price. No matter what price you list, they’ll think it’s too high . . . or too low. But they’ll never think it’s just the right price. Even if you’re only charging a few hundred bucks for a show, people don’t know if that’s a good price or not. They need to talk to you. Get them on the phone and close the deal.

If you’re not a closer, hire someone who is. Give them a percentage of the fee. I’m sure you have at least one friend who is in sales who would be glad to book shows for you for a commission. When it comes to sales, I’ve been around the block a time or two or ten (thousand). I wrote a whole series on sales techniques. If you want to read them, feel free. They’re posted on my personal blog: Sales 101.

I’ll give you a big hint right now, however. When selling anything, you first sell yourself; then you “sell” the product; then you “sell” the price. If they go to your website and see the price, they’ve not necessarily been sold on you or the product (i.e., your show), but even if they are, you still have to “sell” (i.e., convince) them that your price is worth it for what they’ll be getting.

2 – Animation

I’m embarrassed that I have to even tell people this, but seriously folks, animated .GIFs died with the Clinton administration. Get rid of them. They look stupid, clutter up your site, and look more amateurish than my collection of refrigerator art. These days, it’s clean, simple, elegance that sales, not flashing neon signs – at least not on a website.

3 – Pre Home Page

Unless your site is a portal to multiple sites, then you have no reason to have a “click here to enter” page. I’m currently building a site that is my personal “who is Jeff” kind of site. It will be a portal page that links of to my blog, my review site, my magazine site, my product sales site, my church site, and several other sites. In this scenario, it makes sense to have a page before the home page because it’s actual a portal from another site.

However, if I go to beavistheamazingmagician.com, I expect to land on his home page and be on his site, not on some page that tells me his site is “over there” and that I need to “click to enter.” It’s just one extra silly step that I’ve seen magicians (and others) use . . . which leads me to item number four that should not be on your site.

4 – Flash Presentations

This takes the problems with animated .GIFs and pre home pages and smashes them together; then sprinkle in a little incompatibility problems and you’ve got the perfect storm for an annoying website. Many devices these days do not support flash, so you’re already hurt if your potential client tries to visit your site from the “wrong” device. Further, most of the flash presentations I’ve seen are annoying fly in letters and fancy effects that try to make some grandiose statement about the site or the magician that ultimately falls flat.

Flash presentations died with the Bush administration folks. Let it go. It’s over. Then of course, if the presentation does work, and even if it’s half-way decent, you still have to wait for it to finish before you “click here to enter.” Of if they’re nice, they’ll put a “skip flash presentation” link. It’s one more wall between you and your client.

On top of all that, folks, we are the shortest attention span having culture ever to walk the face of the earth. People do not want to sit through some presentation. They want to get the information they came to the site to get.

5 – Auto Audio

Man . . . there is nothing more annoying then some random music sound playing in the background of the site, especially when you can’t quickly or easily see the “turn this crap off” link. First of all, sometimes the persons computer volume might be too loud, and startle them when they land on your site. That only annoys them. Further, if they have to search around find the off “button,” they’re not browsing your site.

You want them looking around your site and reading (or watching videos) about you and your show. You’re trying to get them to contact you. That’ your goal. There are occasions where having maybe a YouTube video auto start might be acceptable. However, if it is, the first goal is to make sure the video is clearly in a prominent location so they can easily click the pause button if need be.

Further, make sure that the video you choose starts off pretty quite and low key so that they’re not blasted by a surprise loud sound. Remember, think about what’s going through the client’s head when they open up the site. Do your best to be objective.

Final Thoughts

I know it’s cliche, but quality over quantity is the way to go. Don’t bombard or overwhelm your site visitors. They should be able to easily find what they want without all the clutter of animation, flash and extra unneeded pages.

Until Next Month . . .