A website is a business' representation on the internet. It's where your customers can get to know you, hear about what you do, and hopefully become loyal followers of your brand. But if people see something they don't like or find it hard to use, they'll leave in a heartbeat.
Your website needs to be easy to use and navigate through. A lot of people come to your site in the hope of finding something but often leave due to the inability to do so. That means that for every single thing on your site – from design to content to navigation – you need to be sure it works well and looks great! Here are six things that will drive people away from your website:
Poor Design
Poor design is one of the biggest problems on websites today. It can make or break your website, and it's entirely up to you. People visit your website because they like what you do and want to hear about it, not because they want to be overwhelmed with poor design choices.
If you want your website to be attractive, seek an expert on this, FluidRank is one of the enthusiasts when it comes to creativity, increasing traffic, and a lot more to improve your business' website.
Don't let the pretty pictures and color schemes fool you, either. Icons that look beautiful but aren't fully functional will drive people away, too. If you want your website to look good and work well, make sure you go with a reputable company like Volusion or Shopify that can help you out with all the little details.
Slow Website
If you want to drive people away from your website, having a slow-loading site will help immensely. Your website needs to load quickly. Fix whatever is making the website load time slow, whether it's due to images, videos, large files, etc.
Making your site faster is something you'll see instant results on. And that's when you see people coming back to your website over and over again because the information is useful, and they can access it easily.
Content That Confuses Your Customers
If the information on your website is written in an unclear way, it's going to confuse people, and they're going to leave. They won't be able to figure out what you sell or the main message of your company, which means that getting new customers will become a lot harder. Your content needs to get right to the point.
If it takes someone several reads before they understand what your company does, there's a problem. You have to be careful when creating content for your website because it's the crux of what you do. It’s not enough to choose a good domain and name, your message should be clear. If people aren't able to find out what they need from it, you'll struggle with keeping customers.
No Mobile Functionality
A lot of traffic today comes from mobile devices like phones and tablets, which means that if your website doesn't work on mobile, you're going to lose out big time. You can't get away with a mobile version of your site anymore – if people are visiting from mobile and the website isn't functional for them, they won't stick around.
People expect websites to be fully functional on mobile devices, not just a scaled-down version of the desktop site. If you're using a website builder like Shopify or Volusion, they should already have mobile functionality built right in. You can't afford to not make your site functional on those types of devices now – people expect it, and they will leave if it's not there.
Duplicate Content
This is a big problem on the internet today, and it's what you'd call “spam.” If your content is placed anywhere other than on your own site, for example, a blog post you wrote on Medium or a guest post you wrote on someone else's blog, Google will penalize you for duplicate content.
If people search for anything related to your company, and they come across content that's on your website, but almost the exact same thing exists elsewhere on the internet, they're going to click away. They'll assume you don't care enough about what you do to write unique content or that your information is off because it exists in two places – which means that getting people to your site will be much harder.
Images That Don't Load
If you have images on your website that don't load, people are going to leave. If they put time into coming to your site and the pictures never show up, all they're going to assume is that it's broken – which means you've got another problem on your hands.
It doesn't matter what size the image is or how important it is to what you're trying to say; if people can't see it, there's no way they'll stick around. You don't need amazing photos – plain catchy images that load quickly will work just fine – but make sure they show up before the visitor decides your website isn't worth their time.
Too Much Text
People these days are impatient. If you give them too much text to go through, they won't bother. They want the information quickly if it's going to be useful for them, and if all your website offers is huge chunks of text on each page with nothing else, then why would they stay?
If you're trying to get people to buy from you, make it easy for them.
You don't want to bog everything down with too much text – keep your pages clean and concise, and give them the information they need as quickly as possible.
If you can avoid writing huge blocks of text and if you've got images that load right away and a site that's functional on mobile devices, you'll be good to go. If not, people aren't going to stick around, and they'll go somewhere else where their needs will be met more quickly.
It is important to know what your visitors want and expect from you. If they are not getting it, then chances are that you will lose them as customers. You must also deliver on these expectations in order for the customer experience to be a good one. With this article, we’ve given you six things that can drive people away from your website or blog post. Now, go back through your content with an eye out for any of these problems so that you may address them before they become too large of an issue.
