Common mistakes are apparent when looking through dozens and dozens of web 2.0 applications popping up recently.  Below I describe 5 and for each of the 5 mistakes, a question is included in order to start thinking about the solution to common mistakes.

1. Intended Audience Is Ambiguous – If you are a start up, your intention is to rapidly increase your user base.  You want every visitor to turn into a dedicated user or refer your site to someone they know.  But if it’s difficult for that very visitor to understand who the intended audience is within 6 seconds or less, then good luck in getting visitors to sign up or refer you to someone they know.  Question: Based on the design of your home page, who is the intended audience according to your visitors?
2. Valuable Scenarios Are Missing – Question: In what scenarios would your users find your product incredibly valuable?  Why make visitors wonder when the application would really come in handy!  Tell them.  I often wonder this myself while perusing a new application featured in a news or a blog site.  If I can’t think of scenarios that would personally help me, I don’t sign up. Do you?
3. Benefits Are Not Communicated – Question: What is the clear cut benefit for a visitor to start using the application?    And how is this apparent on the page?  Some ways this is done:
   1. Graphic – See Graphic on CrossLoop, it gives you an idea of who and what situation it might be used immediately
   2. Feature List – Have a convincing list of features that show this could help people.  See Mint.com how they present their beneficial features
   3. Demo – A video demonstrating how it works, sure beats signing up.  ReviewBasics.com quickly shows their product in a video.
4. Benefits Are Not Demonstrated – Question: Can people see that the application is delivering what it’s promising?  Visitors are impatient.  If they don’t see immediate results they aren’t convinced.  How do they know that a new social networking site is rapidly connecting people?  Are there user profiles that show that?  Or do users have to do a lot of work themselves in order to see the benefits?
   
5. Call to Actions Do Not Cover Multiple Phases – Question: What is it that you want the visitor to do in each step of the conversion process?  The answer is usually very simple: sign up to a service, register for a user account, participate in discussions, etc.  The execution and design of the calls to action are however, are much more difficult.  Different visitors are at different phases of the decision-making process.  The design has to support all of these decisions well.

The answers to the above 5 mistakes won't be solved overnight.  Different applications will have different ways of providing answers to the above problems.  But the sooner the visitors see or experience the answers to the above problems, the faster they become users or go about referring others.