I may not have many things in common with Alltop founder and walking success story Guy Kawasaki, but it turns out that we share a common distaste for a few things that people do online.

His June 2009 Entrepreneur magazine piece titled “Website Marketing Turnoffs” lays out 13 “silly and even stupid ways some companies are hindering adoption of their products and services.” One place where I’ll deviate from Guy’s thinking is his application of these things to companies. To me, this applies to everyone  online, companies and definitely anyone blogging. As I read the list, I couldn’t help but think: “Yes! Right! Seriously! EXACTLY!!”

A few that made me mad just visualizing the offenders in action include:

#1 Forcing immediate registration: Requiring a new user to register is a reasonable request—after you’ve sucked him in. The sites that require registration as the first step are putting a barrier in front of adoption.

I hate this. As a PR guy, I know the value of capturing the email, but as an online PR guy, I also know how fast a visitor can click off a site if something jumps between them and the content they seek. Something to think about…

#3 Windows that don’t generate URLs: Have you ever wanted to point people to a page, but the page has no URL? Did the company decide it didn’t want referrals, links and additional traffic?

Yes, yes…oh and yes! And bloggers, please do both me and yourself a favor, make it easy for me to point to specific posts. There is nothing like trying to send a post to someone only to find that my sole option is sending the main URL with a date and title.

#6 Limiting contact to e-mail: Don’t get me wrong; I live and die by e-mail. But sometimes I want to call or even snail-mail a company. Many companies only let you send an e-mail via their “Contact Us” page. Why can’t companies be honest and just call it “Don’t Contact Us”?

I agree with Guy, but I’m going to take this one in a slightly different direction. When I’m reading up on bloggers, there are times when I’d like to share info or ask a question that is not suited for everyone’s eyes. I have little faith in contact forms (that they work and that they get read), so please people include an email address. Gmail is FREE! Open a new account just for people like me and maintain your privacy with your personal account. You don’t have to check it every five minutes…every ten will do.

Those are just a few that jumped out at me. You can read the full list here.

*Flickr Photo Credit – PaloAlto