Have you ever wondered why your bounce rate is so high? What is it that is driving people to click out of your website so fast? You know the kind of website I am talking about because we’ve all visited them. The kind of website where you’re blasted with pop-up after pop-up. Horrifically loud auto sound that you can’t find where it’s coming from until you scroll 10 blocks deep and find a teeny-tiny video tucked deep in the right-hand corner.
Each individual factor alone may not be enough to drive away your customer, but when you start to add them all up, these factors murder your site and tarnish your brand reputation.
Creating a brilliantly crafted and aesthetically pleasing user experience is not an easy task and it’s often hard to stomach (as a designer) that most sites have issues no matter what you do. (Silently heaving over here… sorry, overshare!). However, if you do your due diligence and keep an eye out for these truly avoidable offenses and eliminate them if they come into play, then your user experience will be all that more pleasant and your bounce rate should decrease.
Condemnable Offenses
1. Popups. Everyone has them. But to the old adage, if your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too? Now, as a marketer, I’m not saying all popups are bad. However, if you throw that popup in my face the second I land on your page, I’m saying Adios. I can just about tolerate pop-ups that appear after 30-60 seconds, so long as the content is good. Show me a popup on a secondary page rather than the homepage and I’ll be even happier.
2. Autosound. If I make my way into a site that had the decency to load in under 3 seconds (hallelujah!) I don’t want to be bombarded with a cacophony of mysterious sounds blaring out of my speakers but nowhere to be found on my screen. I will click out of your site so fast and never return it will be like I was never there at all.
3. Slow load times. This is the 21st century – the land of super high speed internet, package delivery in 2 hours or less, and movie releases streaming to my television so I don’t ever have to leave my house. Human beings have been conditioned to have increasingly slower patience levels because of our in-demand lifestyles and if your website is going to make me wait, I’m again, go to say goodbye before we even said hello.
4. Disappointing Navigation. As a web design professional, this is truly a sinful act and one should be held accountable for such atrocities. Navigation needs to be intuitive, descriptive and straightforward. If I’m left to wonder from anything to everything on a menu, I’m leaving. Amongst the worst of sins? Atrocious typography. It needs to be easy to read on all devices for all eyes. My 33 year old eyes and then potential 85 year old eyes to come next.
5. Strict Demands. “Register Now!” “Times Running Out!” “Download Now or…” Serious, why now? What is going to happen if I don’t? You’ll just ask me again in 20 seconds? Or send me a blast of emails demanding the same thing? Enough already. Treat this as a first date and tease me a little. Stop throwing it all at me like you’re in a rush to marry me already.
6. Vital Info is MIA. There is nothing more frustrating then visiting a website to find out a key piece of information and it’s not there. Imagine going to a salon website to book a service for a haircut, but there isn’t any information on how much that service is. Seriously? Make sure the basics are readily available or I’m likely to go elsewhere.
7. Typos. It’s human to err but this is not the place to do it. Double, triple, and quadruple check your work. This lack of attention to detail send the wrong message to your viewers.
8. Dreadful typography. Come at me with comic sans, I dare you. This goes for Times New Roman as well. You aren’t writing a resume (and even if you were, I still wouldn’t want to see Times). Now, I’m not saying I would leave a website based purely on disgusting fonts alone, but pair a few horrible fonts with one or more other negative factors and you have a recipe for a quick bounce out.
9. Narrow vs. Full Width. Hello claustrophobia! There is something to be said about a narrow site that makes me feel like I just stepped into elevator hell. Full-width or nothing, people!
10. Cookie-Cutter. So many websites look like they came straight out of the box these days. It’s largely due to people like me (sorry, me, you really suck, me!) because we mass produce templates and themes and sell them in our online shops and on other sites meant for creatives. It’s all well and good, however, a lot of our designs are starting to look like one in the same and everyone is snagging them up for a sweet package price of $79. Perhaps we’re all losing our creative edge… or everyone else is.
11. Jargon and PR. I used to be on the same page as everyone else where sunshine literally grew out of my ears and positivity was a life-force, however, now that it turned into a marketing scheme and less of a movement, it’s become a tad more annoying to see on every website and harder to swallow that absolutely everyone believes what they are saying.
12. Video Homepage. Video has become a super trend and I love it, however, it can’t be the way to explain what your company does, or how you introduce yourself, products, or services. When I visit your homepage, I don’t want to see a video opener with an areal shot of your building panning out to employees and products. I want text and I want it humanized.
13. Branding. Lack of or poor design. Either or can set you up for failure.
14. About page. Websites seem to be allergic to this page. No one wants to talk about themselves or what they do. Guess what… this is a crucial page! Whenever I visit a website and this page is missing, I swear a little piece of my soul dwindles away. What’s worse is when the contact page is missing or fails to work. That’s when I truly lose the will to live.
15. Responsive Design. Your site might look amazing on your desktop but did you stop and think about how it looks on a mobile device or tablet? Did you know that nearly 44% of all browsing (in the U.S.) is done via mobile device? Optimize your site or lose business.
16. Clarification. If I can’t tell what it is that you do within seconds of landing on your website, why should I bother sticking around? A descriptive, meaningful, headline is key to grabbing your audience’s attention and getting them to scroll.
17. Bad Prioritization. Some websites prioritize ads over content (you see this a lot on blog sites that bombard you with affiliate links). They will load the ads first and try to bank the ad money. I came to your site because you lured me in with a headline that I thought would solve my problem — not make you money. I understand this is more than likely your livelihood, however, keep in mind that a slow ad server adds up to a slow site. The slower your site and the more ads you push in my face, the faster I am going to leave your site and never come back.
18. Wrongful Execution of Pagination. I get you came across a pagination design block and decided to give it a whirl, but do you really need me to load 10 pages to see 10 medium-sized pictures? Knowing how and when to use pagination is crucial. I don’t want to have to click “more” just to see one more photo or one more post for a total of 50 more times.
19. Boring, Bland, Blah. Some sites truly lack personality. The content is sparse, there is no uniform to it’s design and what is there is simply hard to follow. Before you can even get to another page you find your mouse hovering over the exit because you can’t take it anymore.
20. Flash sites. These are few and far between these days, but some are still kicking around and when encountered I want to pummel them right into the ground. I mean that with the utmost respect.
Go and check your websites! I’m rescanning my own right now. I’m terrified of typos, however, I think social media has trained my eyes to scan right over the imperfections.
