Once people are on your website, you need to convince them quickly that there are lots of reasons for them to stay and browse, or you need to convert them into a customer quickly. But is your bounce rate high, are people leaving your site quickly or is your conversion rate lower than you’d like? Read on to find out if you’re making any of these fatal errors to make people leave your website quickly.
Slow loading
Slow-loading sites are frustrating for the user, and they’re really bad for SEO. Apparently 47% of consumers expected a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, 40% abandon a website when it takes more than 3 seconds to load, and 3 seconds of waiting decreases customer satisfaction by 16%. Make sure you know how to improve your site's loading times.
Can’t find key information
People expect to be able to quickly understand what your site is about, whether it’s relevant to them and then be able to navigate to the areas of the site that they need/want. If they can’t do this then yes, they’re going to get frustrated and leave. It’s bad for your SEO as well so you’ll be shooting yourself in the foot.
Spelling mistakes
Really, with the onset of built-in spell checking you’ve spelled ‘imagination’ incorrectly or you’ve used the wrong version of there, their or they’re! Check your work thoroughly, or pay someone to do it, it’s worth it, and there are plenty of excellent proofreaders out there.
Old-fashioned design
Does your design fit in with the 1990s hodge-podge of text boxes and poorly formatted images? Or is it clean, modern and easy to navigate? If it’s the former then you’ve got some work to do. Check out our tips on giving your website a spring clean to see how you can spruce it up.
Out-of-date
Now this isn’t a play on words of 4, out-of-date refers to dated items on your website being so old that they’re no longer relevant. This includes news items, social media, your copyright label at the bottom of the page and blog posts. If your copyright label is from 2 years ago, your last tweet was 2 weeks ago and your last blog post 2 months ago then your site will feel unloved and not keeping up with the times.
Auto-play
Do you have videos on your home page or landing pages? If so, do they auto-load? If they do, then stop them, now! Even though social media channels now have this function, not everyone wants it when they load a webpage. It’s annoying when the music starts blaring out and you have to find the tab that’s playing that annoying video and stop it. Let your visitors decide if and when they want to play the video.
No call-to-action
If people can’t find a way of furthering their journey with you (if you’ve made a good impression), with an e-newsletter sign-up, an opportunity to find out more, links to social media and a way to get in touch, then forget it, you’ve lost them. So make sure you add them in.
If you think you need to address some of these issues on your own website then get in touch, we can probably help: hello@webfwd.co.uk
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