We know all too well how an unenjoyable browsing experience makes us bounce right out of a website. Let’s stop irritating website visitors on your company site with these tips.
Do you patiently wait for a website to load or would you rather do something else? What are your thoughts about huge pop-up banners? And what about persistently hovering chatbots?
They might be personal, but these are a few of the things that our team at Chykalophia doesn’t enjoy when visiting a website. Coming from this, our CEO & Head of Strategy, Ari Krzyzek, did a simple poll on LinkedIn a little while ago to find out what people find most annoying about a website.
Read on to take a look at the poll result and our proven recommendations you can try to stop irritating website visitors on your company site.
What people hate about your website
Our LinkedIn poll, which you can see below, revealed several things that irritate website visitors the most:
- Annoying newsletter pop-up
- Takes forever to load
- Confusing navigation
- Lack of information
What are the most common problems in a website?
Apart from our poll result, there are other researches that show other things that people dislike about a website. Here are some of them:
- Not mobile optimized
- Autoplay video or sound
- Keyword-stuffed content
- Unrealistic, too-theatrical stock images
- Flashing animations
5 recommendations to stop irritating website visitors
Now that you have seen the most common things that drive people away from your site, let’s see what you can do to avoid them.
1. Reduce the pop-ups
Does your website have a pop-up that covers the whole screen, with a teeny-tiny X button?
Remove it.
Replace this with a smaller pop-up that you can close by clicking anywhere outside the box, with relevant, updated content. And don’t rush. Let people scroll around for a bit, so they know what solution or content you offer, before having anything pop up on their screen.
2. Speed up your site loading time
Did you know that slow loading time can increase your site bounce rate up to 123%?
In the age where attention span is short and time is money, it’s extremely important that your website can load fast. And you can improve your page speed by:
- Compressing your images
- Reducing the number of redirects
- Enabling cache with premium plugins like WP Rocket, or free ones like W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache
- Removing any autoplay multimedia
- Keeping the animation to a minimum amount
3. Be straightforward
Your catchy copy and fancy words might sound good on paper, but not to your visitors.
If you can simply say “long”, avoid saying “sesquipedalian”. This is an exaggerated example, but you get the point 😉
And don’t stuff as many keywords and keyphrases as you can for the sake of SEO. This is irritating website visitors and can drive them to exit your site quickly — which can hurt your SEO instead.
4. Only show the most relevant content
If your customers don’t need to know your supply chain process, don’t display it on your website. Just let them know that you pick ethical suppliers that comply with the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) requirements to show that you’re playing a part in supporting sustainability — for example.
To be relevant and informative without being too annoyingly “chatty”, you should manage your information architecture to show:
- What your business is about
- Clear product or service descriptions
- What makes you different
- Why people should buy from you
- Why people should trust you
5. Be repetitive but not redundant
The rule of seven says a customer needs to come across a message at least seven times before it seeps through. This means that you need to repeatedly communicate your brand message across your website.
However, find different ways to do it so people don’t find your content boring. For example, display one message on your hero banner, on a section on the homepage, and on a dedicated landing page — delivering each on in different wording.
Are you guilty of irritating website visitors on your company site?
If the answer is yes, let’s change it now!
You can bookmark this page for your future reference when the time comes for you to revamp your website. And if you need help from a professional team of brand strategists, digital marketers, web designers, and web developers, we are only one call away!
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