Last week, I was working on a "Pick my Brain" consultation with Howard Meibach.

His site, Hollywood Lit Sales.com offers some incredible tools and resources to help get your movie script accepted by one of the major studios.

Howard asked "What do you think of my home page banner that advertises a free Writers Survival Kit with every order?"

And I said: "What banner??"

My firewall (ZoneAlarm) is helpfully set to block pop-up windows and other annoying ads for me. I love that!

Trouble is, often the firewall software can't distinguish between the intrusive stuff I don't want, and things that are legitimate. I've seen this before - including catalog pages on a major corporate site where I couldn't see any way to buy an item - the "Add to Shopping Cart" button was also being disallowed by my firewall.

I don't know how to tell what will or won't be blocked. But if you have anything on your site that's a banner, or Javascript, or could be classified as a pop-up, make sure to check that it shows up on browsers protected by firewall software.

Otherwise, your visitors could be missing your best calls to action!