Even though your online business idea might be great, got tons of initial traction and generated huge traffic, you began noticing a steady decline in traffic over time. Why? Well, there’s no easy way to say this but… people hate your website! Let’s take a look at the top 5 things that might make people hate your website:
Slow Page Loads
People hate websites that take ages to load. There are plenty of page speed grading sites out there, so make sure your site loads in a reasonable time before you lose all your visitors. A website that takes more than 2 seconds to load will annoy even its most patient users. Ideally, you are aiming for sub one second times, which can be a challenge for most beginners who tend to pile on the plugins, often thinking more is better. On the contrary, an efficient, light website will usually trump one with all the bells and whistles. Remember when Google first came out? Plenty of search engines were overloaded with banners, news boxes, etc. Google blew them all away with a clean, simple page with a really effective search box.
Slow speed can be as a result of too many server requests caused by plugins, modules and scripts on your site. You should also avoid excessively using large images, flash animations and videos.
Too Much Text
Many users do not go the extra mile to read all website content. Recent research has revealed that most online users only read about 28% of the text on a page. Even though it is important to provide content for your website, using other informational materials like images, videos, infographics or audio can create more user engagement and improve traffic/conversion rates.
Try using excerpts on your posts that provide a brief summary of the full text in the article. Readers can choose to continue and read more, saving you the bandwidth for everyone who isn’t interested in that particular piece.
Your Website Is Not Responsive
With more people using mobile devices to access the internet, your online business will have a decline in traffic if your website’s mobile version is not optimized properly. Mobile users will immediately leave your mobile site and will surely not return as it will have otherwise “wasted their time” instead of providing useful information.
The recent Google mobile update (mobilegeddon) has resulted in lower mobile search engine ranking if your website is not optimized for mobile.
Pop-Ups and Auto-Play Videos
Pop-ups have been shown to interfere greatly with user experience. If you would like to request for subscription, or have an ad viewed, ensure it does not interfere with users. Having to close pop-up every time annoys users and deters them from returning to the site. Google even penalizes sites with too many pop-up ads!
A good way to use pop-ups is to deploy them after a user has been on your site for some time or has scrolled to a particular point on the page. This indicates that they already have an interest in your site and will probably not be as deterred from sticking around compared to a fresh visitor. In addition, make sure you don’t have any videos on your site that auto play. Your visitor will be extremely frustrated, especially if they are viewing your site at work where the noise could land them in hot water. Make the video is muted and let users decide if they want to hear it.
Poor Customer Service
Whenever users or potential customers have a problem or issue while on your site, they usually want to be assisted within the shortest time possible. Your website should have several ways in which customers can reach you and ensure you respond to them as soon as possible. Users do not trust websites that do not have customer assistance or have horrible customer experience.
