In the job market for management consulting, marketing/advertising, or government relations positions, I visit LinkedIn and Craigslist on a daily basis.
After meeting Monster.com’s social media manager, Katrina Kibben, last week at a networking event, I reflected I hadn’t visited the job search website in a few years.
I pointed my website to monster.com — and was met with this screenshot:
Ugh. Missing sections and ugly design, right?
That’s what I thought and tweeted a link of the above photo to Katrina.
She replied with the thought my browser didn’t have the latest version of Flash installed. It did, but I re-ran the Flash player installation to be on the safe side. Returning to the site, it looked the same.
Musing, I wondered if the homepage was riddled with cookie-laden ads — and turned off Adblock Plus, a Firefox addon that blocks ads from websites.
Refreshing the monster site, have another look:
I don’t like to look at websites with online advertisements for many reasons, including the fact they typically increase the time to load a page. Ads also detract me from the content I’m looking for, which is why I visited the website to begin with.
I’m not suggesting a website shouldn’t run ads, but by putting them in the middle of your website design, you risk alienating many potential customers. Something to think about the next time you meet with your web designer.
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You’re almost totally right
One thing I would say is that ALL plugins are a nuisance, and Flash especially. I would say that designs can easily be handled through other means than Flash, and I am often amazed at how many businesses actually use the less SEO-friendly Flash.
But you’re spot on regarding giving too much prevalence for ads. It is annoying, and would turn many people off. In that respect many can learn from your article, so thanks for writing it.
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Agree with you. Even I don’t like to visit website that takes too much time to load and too much advertisement in the home page. Mostly flash ads are really annoying.
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