Does Your Website Annoy Visitors?
We all know an annoying website when we see one, but how many of these troublesome attributes are we using on our own websites?
We can assume that any business wanting to reach its full customer base has a website. The internet allows businesses reach a broad base of people and engage with their audience quickly. This has not always been true, of course. We have come a long way since the early days of websites, where webpages merely acted as a static brochure presented in pixels.
Connection and Convenience
Today,there is no shortage of impressive features, tweaks and capabilities that companies, individuals or organizations can use to dazzle their intended audience online. But many website owners are still not thinking in a user-centric way when it comes to web design. As Hubspot, a leader in the field of inbound marketing and customer retention, says: “poor user experience can cause high page abandonment rates, low visitor-to-lead conversion rates, poor organic search listing positions, and a plain ol’ bad reputation.”
Therefore, if your goal is to attract as many visitors to your website as possible—and make sure they stay on your page—there are certain key features and habits that you need to steer away. Don’t want to fall into the trap of irritating, annoying or offending your customers.
Here is a list of the worst offenders you should avoid:
Unnecessary Pagination
If your website is focused on content or editorial, it can be tempting to paginate your posts in order to get the most ad impressions and page views as possible. This may be good for your analytics, but it is immensely annoying to visitors who are simply trying to engage with your content. If you’re lucky enough to have attracted eyeballs to your website, don’t make visitors work too hard to get to the end of a post by adding unnecessary pagination.
Non-mobile Optimization
The fact of the matter is that in the smartphone era, a large majority of interaction with your website is going to be done from mobile devices. So don’t design a website that looks great on desktop but is hard to read and clunky to navigate on mobile. If you do, your users—and by extension, your traffic—will suffer. Mobile design is not a ‘nice to have’ it’s a definite ‘must have’.
Autoplay Video or Music
Let’s say you have a wonderful company video or theme music you think goes well with your message online. Setting it to automatically play when a visitor lands on your page is the quickest way to get that user to hit “mute,” or worse—close the window altogether. It’s presumptuous to assume your website visitor is in a context where audio is wanted or appropriate. Not giving them the choice to opt into playing that video or song is a mistake that you will almost certainly pay for.
Burying Contact Information
Often, a visitor to your website is there for a very practical purpose. They want to know your street address, your phone number or the best way to get in touch with your customer service team. Too often, this information is buried in the website navigation and requires far too many clicks to get to. You may want your customer to read your latest blog post or viral video, but don’t irritate them by putting the information you want them to see in front of the information they need to see.
Excessive Pop-ups
Many website owners are encouraged to have call to actions on their site, whether it’s signing up for a newsletter, following on social media or clicking for a free download. While CTAs are an important way to engage your visitors, presenting them in the form of pop ups can be highly detrimental to the user experience. While one pop-up may be okay, multiple “asks” that interrupt the navigation or the experience of the website, are to be avoided at all costs.
Put yourself in the users’ shoes. Check the usability of your site regularly. Reach out and ask people how they feel about using your site. Be proactive in your design and check out your competitors, if you want to improve the overall user experience.