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12 Things People Will Hate About Your Website by DR Adept of Basildon

by Christina on Wednesday 18th April, 2012 at 13:04 COMMENTS (0)

As a website designer and inbound marketing consultancy, it is our responsibly to advise our clients against including anything in their website which will annoy the visitor.

We thought we would extend this advice to our readers and have listed a few of the most annoying things people will hate about your website.

12 things people hate about your website:

1) Pop-Up Ads
Pop-ups are seriously annoying. Why distract your visitor from carrying out the action they came to your site to do. All you are achieving is interrupting the consumer and annoying them with your pop up. Instead convert visitors into customers with well written content and compelling call to actions.

2) Automatically Playing Multimedia Content When a Page Loads
During the week the majority of your website visitors are probably browsing the internet from their desk at work. It could be their lunch break, or it could be a sneaky bit of downtime. Your visitor thinks he is having a quite look around the internet, he lands on your website, and suddenly there is noise coming from his PC. Now your visitor is in a panic because he doesn't want his boss to hear your music or talking, alerting his boss he is doing something he shouldn't be. It is far easier to click the back button away from your website than trying to locate the mute button. In this instance your visitor feels embarrassed and it's your fault. Let visitors choose to play your multimedia content; don't force it on them.

3) Generic Stock Photography
It's always best to use photos of your staff, your products and your customers. They look far more realistic and truthfully tell a story of who you are and what you do. Any website designer worth his weight in gold will be able to design visuals which directly relate to you.

4) Including a 'Contact Us' Form in Lieu of Contact Information
People like to contact companies in different ways. A contact us form does not address the needs of visitors who may want to contact you urgently or who would like ongoing communications with you.

A contact us form is fine but it should not be the only means available to your visitor for contacting you. Let people get in touch with you via email, social media and telephone, make that information available on your website.

5) SEO-Driven Copy
We've all seen websites with bolded text and the same word repeated over again.

It makes no sense to the visitor to your website, if the visitor can not read your copy they are not going to convert into a customer. Check all the copy on your website, make sure it makes sense, answers your visitor question or solve their problem. A word of warning! Google no longer tolerates over optimised content.

6) Not Including Social Sharing Buttons on Your Content
There is nothing more frustrating to a visitor who loves your content and wants to share it with their community than not being able to find your social sharing buttons. Social sharing buttons make it easy to share your content with one click, saving your visitor the time it takes to copy your URL, shorten it, and compose a tweet.

Include social sharing buttons with all your content. It will help your visitor spread the word about your website, in turn helping you rank better within the search engines which will lead to more traffic to your site, and more lead generation opportunities.

7) You Don't Have a Blog
About us pages are no longer enough. Consumers are doing research before they purchase. They want to know who you are, what you do, why you do it and what you had for breakfast. OK we are lying about that last bit. No one wants to know what you had for breakfast or what you're drinking right at this minute.

Be open; let your visitor know as much about you as possible, keep it professional and show case your expertise in your industry.

8) Titles and Content do not match
Many website owners concentrate on their rankings for their keywords. The visitor sees these keywords within the search engine results, it is exactly what they want (4 Star Hotel in Cambridge) they click on the link to a website and land on a page which does not match the description they just read. Instead they are brought to a page about 'Well used tent for rent in Darby'. The visitor will click back on the browser leaving the website behind and feeling a bit frustrated because they were lied too.

It's important to capture your audience attention with great titles which encourage the person to click through to your content. Avoid disappointment by delivering a page with content that is unrelated to the titles.

9) Your Call-to-Action Copy Doesn't Align With the Offer
The same rule applies to your call to action. Your call to action has to match the offer 'download our FREE SEO guide'. You are saying by clicking this call to action you will be able to download a SEO guide at no cost. Not a website design guide for £100.00. The consumer will feel you are trying to cheat them, it will kill your reputation, and the conversion rates for your call to action and landing pages.

10) Sliders That Take Forever to Load
Sliders are a great way to showcase multiple images and they look great if done correctly. If your slider loads images quickly and does not load a new page every time the user clicks, great! You've got it right and your sliders don't annoy. There are many sites out there, every time you click the arrow the next image takes a long time to load or you are taken to another page, it is too time consuming and frustrates the visitor.

11) Using Flash
Flash looks stunning when used correctly. But search engines can not read it, so your site is not going to get indexed. When visitors come to your website they are usually looking for something specific, it's very annoying when you have to wait 10 seconds or longer for your visual intro to load. More often the visitor will leave your website than wait.

12) The Worst Offender: I Don't Know What to Do.
The most important thing your website should be doing, is telling the visitor what you do and how they go about making a purchase. Include clear headlines, copy your visitor can understand which describes the value of what you do, and one primary call to action per page showing the visitor what step to take next, such as subscribing to your blog, getting a free trial or calling you.

Many of the above mentioned 'irritants' create a poor user experience, high page abandonment, and low visitor to lead conversion rates as well as poor organic search listings.

Although we give this advice, many of our clients, on the recommendation of a 3rd party, usually a friend, will insist on having one if not all of the items listed above, added to their website.

What website components drive you nuts? Share them in the comments!

The DR Adept Team

Filed under: Tags: Landing Pages Call to action marketing design

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