Your website has the potential to drive your customers away. Use these 6 tips to steer clear of some common website pitfalls.
Attracting a potential customer to your website is hard enough but grabbing their interest and persuading them to buy or use your services is even more difficult. That is why it is so important to design your website so that you don’t frustrate or irritate your visitors, making them jump through hoops to find the information that they need. Here are some examples of common website mistakes that make visitors leave a website within the first few minutes.
Putting up Barriers that Prevent Them Viewing the Information
Avoid putting up barriers between you and potential customers by forcing visitors to register before them can view content of your site. In most cases, the visitor will leave and try to find the information that they are looking for elsewhere.
Stale Old Content
It is no good having a glossy, professional looking site if your content is old and stale. You need to keep your site constantly updated with fresh new content. Not only will this make your site more relevant and interesting but it will also contribute to higher rankings on the search engines.
Too Many Ads
If your site bombards your visitors with too many ads that pop up, flash at them or fill the entire screen then you are really going to infuriate your visitors, which puts them off staying on your site to buy from you. Running ads on your site makes good business sense but in order to maximise your retention rate, and not chase away your visitors, your ads need to be discreet and fit in with the theme of your site.
Bad Navigation
Nothing frustrates a website visitor more than a site that is hard to navigate. If it is too complicated or too hard for your visitors to find their way around, it will make them feel confused, angry and irritated. These are definitely not the emotions you want your potential customers to feel when they visit your website.
Hiding Your Website Content
It’s a big mistake to make your visitors search your entire website just to find the relevant information they need. Try to group similar content in a clear, concise manner. Don’t complicate things by distributing your content and information across multiple pages that could easily have been put on one page. Bad content structure can literally destroy your conversion and retention rates. Make all of your content, especially your contact information easy to find. It is estimated that as many as 50% of sales are lost because potential customers can’t find what they are looking for.
Invasive Use of Audio and Video
Most of your visitors will prefer to choose what content they want to absorb. Having voice or audio content that loads up and starts playing automatically can potentially drive a lot of customers away. Give users the choice of viewing videos or listening to audio content. Don’t force them.
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