It’s advisable to avoid things that do more harm than good. Here are some:

Banner advertisements
Once touted as revenue cash cows, banner ads have become little more than clutter taking up valuable Web page real estate.

The vast majority of Web surfers completely ignore banner ads. The ads generate little income for the advertisers that buy and sell them. Banner ads serve largely as distractions and potential exit doors. All these negatives are ample reason to shy away from banner ads.

Excessive hyperlinks
Why spend all your time, energy and budget attracting hard-to-lure visitors to your Web site only to give them dozens of invitations to leave? Every hyperlink to someone else’s site takes a visitor off your site.

Be discreet when placing links to other sites. When linking, negotiate with that site for a reciprocal link back to yours. In this way, you have an opportunity to capture visitors leaving the other sites to compensate for the ones you lose to them.

Counters
When the Web was young someone thought it clever to tick off how many times Web sites had been visited. This is little more than ego gratification. Counters have no value to your Web site visitors.

Pop-up ads
Pop-up ads, which suddenly appear unrequested in their own small browser windows, have become obnoxiously commonplace.

Pop-up ads are a test of visitors’ patience that potentially exceeds their annoyance threshold. The ad can ultimately trigger a visitor’s departure. Avoid these obnoxious visual intrusions.