There are plenty of reasons why a website just isn’t cutting it.
Before you start hiring marketing consultants and trying to target a new customer base, take a moment to really look at your website features.
The bells and whistles you thought were cool when you first launched your site may be driving customers away or at least discouraging conversions.
Here are five annoying website features you probably want to avoid if you want to get more bang out of your website content:
1. Forced Registration
People are more sensitive than ever about the information they give out online. If you “insist” on having an user register before they can freely browse your site, you’re more likely to drive them away.
You have plenty of opportunities to collect important user data from people who really want to be on your email mailing list, subscribe to your newsletter or fill out a voluntary request for additional information. There’s really no reason to make it mandatory.
2. Automatic Music or Video
If an user has no choice but to watch an introduction video or hear a soundtrack while browsing your site, don’t expect too many to return all that often.
A lot of people access a website at work or via a mobile device in many places where it’s not appropriate to view a noisy website.
And it’s not all that pleasant for the unsuspecting visitor wearing headphones when they come across a combination of forced audio and video. There’s nothing wrong with including such elements on your site, just make it optional.
3. Too Many Ads
It’s understandable to want to generate as much ad revenue as possible to keep your site running while reducing your expenses as much as possible. Ads become a problem, however, when they overpower your site.
If a visitor to your site has to try and figure out what products you actually sell by sifting through a bunch of ads, they’re not going to stay around that long.
Weigh the pros and cons of each ad you agree to have placed on your site. Besides, you’ll generate more revenue just by having a site people actual want to visit.
4. Cluttered Layouts
According to Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, more than half of all Americans own a smartphone.
This means the cluttered layout that once seemed cool when most people viewed your website via a stationary PC is very difficult to decipher on a smaller screen.
Even if your content can be viewed, the page load time is going to be slower for sites with everything from scrolling text to a series of videos.
This doesn’t work well with short attention spans and itchy fingers ready to leave your site with a simple click or touch.
5. Self-moving Content
This refers to things like those self-expanding ads where a guy or gal walks across your screen and gets right into the pitch if you don’t hurry up and click the often hard-to-find “x” to close it.
As a general rule, you shouldn’t take away a visitor’s ability to make their own choices on your site, whether it be to navigate freely with the use of a mouse or keyboard or opt to not click on a video and just browse the text.
