8 reasons why people leave your website

Instead of discussing how to design a model user-friendly website let’s start with the basics and list the most irritating things to do when planning your website.

Here it comes: find out 8 common mistakes that make your website a bad website and drives your visitors mad.

1 - Slow website loading time

Every second counts. Visitors don’t have patience to wait several seconds till your page fully uploads. They want it fast, they want it now. Give them what they want and do it fast, otherwise they’ll find it in your competition’s website and probably won’t come back to you again. How fast should your website load? Generally speaking, the faster the better. It is said that about 25% of users tend to leave the page that loads for more than 4 seconds.

2 - Outdated content and design

Make sure your website is as fresh as possible, outdated pages look dead. If the content isn’t regularly updated the whole page might make the impression of being untrustworthy. Also, when it comes to the design remember that sometimes ‘less is better’. Don’t overdo your ideas when designing layout, carefully choose fonts and its sizes, colours, graphics, background and so on. Make it coherent and readable, bet on something that doesn’t hurt eyes.

3 - Lack of crucial info about you

So, the user has googled the keywords that interests him the most, he found out and visited your website and he’d like to get in touch with you to finalise his intends. Believe me, there are still pages that don’t provide something absolutely seemingly obvious like contact details, the address, opening hours, telephone number or contact email, not to mention Skype id or links to Social Media profiles. Such visitors, who wanted to reach you out, but they didn’t find how they can do it will leave your website irritated. Provide your audience with details they want to know. Make sure to put all the necessary data in your content, be specific, be transparent, be precise.

4 - Bad navigation

Lack of continuous flow is extremely frustrating, especially if the flow leads to dead ends (The HTTP 404, 404 Not Found and 404). You can of course provide customized (funny?) 404 which can be your last resort. I’d recommend though, check thoroughly if your website is dead links free and its navigation is easy, intuitive and doesn’t cause confusion.

5 - Slides

Sadly, nowadays, extremely popular and annoying practice. Instead of displaying all content in one page some website owners split it into several chunks and one by one, provide in different slides. In this way, the visitor instead of having a big picture is forced to go through a slider and reload the page to find what interests him. Guess where the patience is wearing thin?

6 - Popups

Damned if with sound. Don’t go this way. At least, if you have to, bear in mind to limit them to the minimum and not to display them shortly after someone visits your website.

7 - Lack of mobile version

Come on, it’s 2017, your website has to be responsive. Not only because Google will index your website in a lower position in organic search results. Nowadays, mobile took over the traditional old way of using the Internet and the number of mobile users is increasing all the time. You have to be aware that much of your traffic comes from portable devices. Make sure your website is mobile friendly and approachable to mobile users.

8 - Autoplay

Don’t let anyone persuade you that a catchy melody or a video will attract your visitors. It most certainly won’t. Bombarding visitors with a content they do not want to see (especially if one is out of the WiFi connection on a limited mobile data plan) usually ends with immediate fallback.

Summary:

It takes only several seconds, a short glance is enough to make an opinion about something or someone. People tend to judge a book by its cover. The first impression matters and you should keep this in mind when creating your own website or designing an app. If your bounce rate tends to be alarmingly high that’s the best moment to think about implementing some changes. Someone googled you, entered your website. Just don’t waste your chance and let him go away.

Photo by: Álvaro Serrano, unsplash.com