User Experience: 6 Things People Hate on websites

If you’ve been struggling to get website traffic — it could be directly related to your website and not the products or services you offer. 

It’s more important than ever to make sure your website is the best it can be. User experience (UX) can make or break the success of your website, so ensuring that you provide a stellar one is crucial to turning visitors into customers or clients.

If you’re trying to create more traction on your site or want to make sure you’re not making common mistakes, I’m here to help. Let’s take a look at the most frustrating things customers experience on a website and what to do to fix them. 

Long Load Times

With the internet often providing instant results, people don’t want to wait around for a website to load. When a website takes too long to load, people may stop engaging with it and move on to a new site. When we say too long, we typically mean anything more than 2-5 seconds. 

Make sure to regularly check your website’s load time and ensure that it’s still meeting expectations. Google offers a free diagnostic tool called PageSpeed Insights that will analyse your website’s speed and generate suggestions to help make your page faster.

Optimisations you can make to improve your load times include: reducing image sizes and using compressed formats (such as JPEG), clearing your cache, ensuring your plugins are up-to-date and optimized, and using themes that don’t bloat your pages.

Auto-playing Videos

Having a video auto-play on a website when you’re not expecting it can be a startling and unpleasant experience – especially if you left your volume on high. Most of the time, users can’t find the video right away, making the experience even worse.

Most users will simply choose to close the browser tab rather than try and find the pause button. 

If you still want to include the video on your page, there are two ways you can ease the viewer’s experience.

One option is to auto-mute your video and give the viewer the option to unmute. You can even have your video play in a mini-player that moves to the corner of the screen so your visitor can continue to browse.

Another option is to turn off auto-play and leave playing the video in the hands of the viewer. Either way, make sure you host your video off-site to avoid the long load times we discussed earlier.

It’s Not Mobile Friendly

The majority of people rely on their mobile phones and tablets to search the web instead of traditional computers or laptops.

It can be off-putting to open a website on your phone and be unable to see any of the elements of the page clearly or have to scroll around the page to find the search bar or menu through a haze of tiny font and too-small buttons.

The only way to combat this issue is to design your website’s user interface with mobile compatibility in mind.

All sites I build are ready for mobile users and optimised for their experience. Without it, your site faces not only the ire of visitors but Google’s algorithm as well. 

Excessive Pop-Ups

Pop-up ads can be an annoying and discouraging addition to your webpage.

Users often disapprove of pop-up ads, and too many may cause enough frustration to make someone leave your site.

Users prefer a seamless experience, and pop-ups only serve to break that flow. 

If you must include pop-ups on your page, make sure to do so sparingly and in moderation. It may also be wise to delay pop-ups and give the users enough time to browse your site and get comfortable. You can also ensure that the pop-ups on the site are helpful to the user rather than providing random and unuseful ads.  

Dead Links and 404 Pages

It’s frustrating to click a link and end up on a 404 page. It can make your site look unprofessional and out of date. Dead links ruin the user experience and may prevent people from viewing or coming back to your webpage. 

An excellent way to prevent this from happening is regularly auditing your site and checking the authenticity of the sites listed on your webpage. Google Analytics can help you monitor if users get sent to a 404 page so that you can pinpoint your problem areas and ensure a smooth experience for all your visitors.

Unclear Layout and Messy Design

Website design is a crucial part of keeping people on your webpage. It’s the first thing people notice, and good first impressions are essential for your website’s success. Too many design elements, clunky or hard-to-read fonts, and a lack of margins can make a user confused and cause them to turn away from your site. 

In addition to this, the use of poorly structured text will discourage users from using your site. Visitors want to find the information they need as quickly as possible- they don’t want to have to read paragraphs of text before finding what they need. 

Make sure your design is clean and clear. Use headings with keywords to draw attention to various points of information. Make sure the elements of your website are harmonious with each other. Don’t feel like you need to fill the entire page with images and text- white space is okay —  keep it clean. Make sure the font you use is readable, and if you use various fonts, make sure they complement each other.   

Let’s make your User Experience awesome!

I pride myself on my digital marketing and WordPress web development experience and create websites that look good and are technically awesome!

Whilst you can use your marketing budget on paid advertisements and spend all day every day on social media, that can be an expensive, time-consuming route that does not necessarily bring the kind of web traffic you desire.

There are countless marketing tactics and strategies out there all claiming to give you overnight success, but it’s all BS. These “gurus” are trying to sell you into the dream that digital space is easy. It’s not! It takes a lot of hard work.

Work with me and let’s turn your ideas into a more elevated and profitable business with the help of a great user experience and search engine optimisation.

I hope you found my post on user experience helpful

until next time