4 Features That Make Your Website Annoying To Visitors
One click.
That’s all it takes for someone to leave your website…
So give your visitors a good reason to stay!
Engaging blog or video content, quizzes, images, and many more options are available to you. There are a lot of cool features you can add to your website, but some that seem cool may be annoying your visitors!
To stop your visitors from clicking away too soon, be sure to avoid these annoyances:
1) Music That Plays Automatically
You might think it’s cool to give people a taste of your personality with some awesome music that starts right after they visit your page…
But the majority of visitors will not appreciate this. Especially if they can’t figure out how to turn it off.
If you’re going to put music on there, make people press play instead of having to hunt for the stop button.
2) Flashy Images, Animations, and Colors
Your website should be easy on the eyes. If you have big and bright animations of unicorns & rainbows, or pictures of cats on your business website… you may want to re-think how you present yourself.
Using colors that complement each other are very helpful. Don’t use too many colors, otherwise you might give your visitors a head-ache.
People will visit your website for very specific reasons. Make it easy to find that content, and don’t let anything get in the way of it.
3) Long load times
Let’s say you’ve got 17 high-res photos, a couple videos, and lots of text all on one page. Your
visitors might never see it all because it takes way too long to load!
Time to simplify.
Keep image sizes to a minimum, you can link to larger files if you want. Don’t overload your pages with content. Just show people what they’re looking for and link to another page if they want what’s on there.
4) Auto playing Flash intro
Flash animations on websites used to be popular a few years ago, but they’ve since fallen out of fashion. And I, for one, am grateful…
They’re slow to load, not accessible on all devices, difficult to create, and won’t be indexed properly by Google.
(I also never bothered to get good at Flash. I tried it once many years ago… and was bored and frustrated instantly.)
The best rule to follow in all cases is “Does my website serve my visitors in the best way possible?”
If the website’s purpose is to help your visitors find entertainment and buy tickets to an event, remove anything that doesn’t help your visitor accomplish that.
What design elements or features do you find annoying on websites you visit? Leave a comment below.
Photo: “Merlin’s evil stare, putting a spell on me” by Melissa Wiese