UX Mistakes That Are Driving Traffic Away From Your Website

Let’s say you are offering the best product/service in your industry. Your pricing is competitive, your SEO is top notch, and your online reviews are stellar. All of that is great! But if you don’t have a website to match, none of that will matter much.

Have you noticed the intense focus marketing professionals and creatives have placed on UX? How the number of jobs with the word “UX” in them has exploded over the last few years? Consumers are more sophisticated than they have ever been, so their expectations are high. And what we’ve seen is that nothing, and we mean NOTHING, will drive consumers away from a business faster than a bad website.

So let’s talk about some of the mistakes we see businesses making on their websites that are absolute killers of user experience.

Slow-Loading Pages

Patience is a virtue, but it’s one that seems to be taken for granted these days. The highest converting sites have a page load time between 1.8 and 2.7 seconds. Sites with the lowest bounce rate are even fast, clocking in no longer than 1.2 seconds all the way down to 700 milliseconds. Clearly, consumers aren’t willing to wait around very long.

Disappearing Drop Down Menus

Have you ever visited a site, hovered over a heading on the navigation bar and then just when you think you’re going to click your search term … the whole thing vanishes? This can be extremely frustrating for consumers who don’t want to perform nav bar gymnastics just to find what they’re looking for. Navigating your site should be simple and intuitive –– users won’t stick around to learn your navigation.

Autoplay Video

This is how it usually goes. A user comes to your website interested to learn more about your product/service, and within a few seconds of entering a video starts to play. They have forgotten that the volume on their speakers was turned up, and not only does the sound startle them, but it drives them into a mini panic as they scramble around the site trying to find the video to stop or mute it. Maybe they find it and hit mute, but it’s more likely that annoyed users will just X out of your site to stop the noise.

Super Long Forms

Yes, you need to collect information from your site visitors. And yes, having more information about those prospects allows you to tailor their experience. But do you really need to know their address? The name of their employer? When it comes to forms, users want to things to be short and sweet. Forms require effort and prospective customers simply don’t want to expend more than they need. All a long form does is signal that it’s time for them to bail.

If you need help developing or updating your website, we’d love to help! At Higgins Marketing Group, we bring together great design and marketing savvy to create beautiful websites that convert. Contact us today to get started on your new website!