We recently read an article that highlights 12 things about your website that really annoys your visitors; and if it wasn’t your website it would probably annoy you too!
The unofficial guide on what NOT to do when designing your website.
1. Your website takes FOREVER to load.
Because we absolutely love waiting for pages to load! Not. KISSmetrics reported that 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less, and 40% abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. In that same report they said that a ONE SECOND DELAY in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions! The time it takes your page to load can be affected by various elements including, but not limited to, the size of your images, the code, videos and more.
Optimizing your website’s load performance should be at the top of your to-do list if you want your visitors to stick around!
If you need professional help get in touch with us and you won’t have to worry about a thing!
2. Your website isn’t mobile optimized.
If you’ve ever used your phone to browse the internet and came across a website where you’ve had to zoom and scroll from side to side just to read the copy on the website you know just how frustrating it is and that is why Google keeps making these changes; they want to improve the browsing experience for mobile users.
Remember when Google announced “mobilegeddon” back in 2015 a.k.a a major mobile algorithm update that penalizes websites that are not mobile-friendly? They also announced that starting on May 1, 2016 it would strengthen the ranking of mobile-friendly websites.
As a standard all of the websites we design are responsive. (Mobile friendly)
3. You’re not telling visitors what you want them to do on your website.
A study done by Small Business Trends suggests that 80% of small B2B websites lacked a call-to-action (as recently as 2013).
If you’re not going to provide your visitors with direction on your website or ask them to click around you’re going to lose sales and leads. Make sure you have clear call-to-action on your website with clear headlines, page copy that explains what you do in a language your visitors will understand (with no industry-related jargon).
You need to show them how to take the next steps; whether you want them to watch a video or subscribe to your blog or any other actions you want them to perform on your site. (Clear call-to-action.)
4. Making use of excessive pop-ups.
There is a right and wrong way to use pop-ups; excessive pop-ups that disrupt the reading process can be extremely annoying especially when the copy on the pop-up’s call-to-action is made to guilt-trip you.
Using pop-ups the right way means using them in moderation, do not bombard your visitors with them, display different pop-ups or no pop-ups to returning visitors, track their effectiveness to see whether or not they’re working and use delightful copy! Do not try to guilt-trip your visitors into clicking on the call-to-action.
Here is an example of using delightful copy on a pop-up
5. Videos on your website automatically plays when a visitor opens your website.
We don’t know about you, but if we’re on a website that automatically starts playing media we weren’t expecting we are going to close it as fast as we possibly can. If you want your videos to play automatically when someone lands on your website at least mute the sound and let the visitor decide whether or not he / she wants to watch or listen to the media.
Facebook and Twitter autoplay videos in newsfeed but they are always muted unless a user decides to unmute them.
6. Disorienting animations.
You have about 3 seconds to grab a user’s attention on your website, don’t make use of any disorienting, flashing animations that somehow managed to build a time machine, travel to the 20th century and invade websites across the internet. You need to keep your animations simple and subtle like the one below:
7. Making use of cheesy stock photography.
Bad stock photos are generic at best and ridiculous at worst. Images are supposed to clarify something for your business and bad stock photography doesn’t help you or your business.
The best thing for both your website and your business is to show real pictures of your employees, company and your customers. It’s extremely important to humanize your brand as customers want to connect with other humans!
If you don’t have any of that make use of these great websites that have the best free and non-cheesy images for your website:
8. There is a contact form, but no additional contact information on your website.
Even though a “Contact Us” form seems like the easiest way to generate an email list it is the least valuable way to generate leads for you and your site visitors. There is nothing wrong with having a contact us form on your website but you have to provide additional contact information like a telephone number they can call you on. If your customer needs help, they want it now; they don’t want to fill in your contact us form and wait for a response.
Provide them with a telephone number and links to your social media channels so they can connect with YOU!
9. Your “About Us” page is made up of business babble and industry-related jargon.
Your “About us” page needs to tell your customers a story about who you are and what you do in a language that they speak and understand. Leave out all the business babble and industry-related jargon that most of your customers won’t understand. Keep it simple!
10. Your website doesn’t clearly explain what your company does.
Nobody wants to click around on a website to try and figure out what a company does, it’s extremely frustrating. Make sure that your webpage clearly explains who you are, what you do and/or what the visitor can do on your website.
If your visitors can’t identify what you do within seconds they will abandon ship! If you want them to stick around let them know exactly what you do as soon as they land on your website.
11. It doesn’t have a blog.
Not having a blog on your website means that you’re missing out on a great opportunity to provide your visitors with valuable information as well as ranking opportunities!
Consumers these days perform company research on their own before contacting a salesperson. Make sure that they can find answers to their common questions on your blog in the form of various articles; they’re more likely to trust what you have to say because you’ve helped them in the past via your blog!
12. Your image sliders take forever to load.
Image sliders are a way to showcase various images while saving space, but, there is a right and a wrong way to use them.
- The right way: Your slider loads images quickly and doesn’t require a new page to load every time a user clicks.
- The wrong way: Every time you click the arrow for the next image, your page loads an entirely new web page. This can increase page load time by several seconds as the entire webpage reloads.
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