10 Ways to Lose Website Visitors!

Abigail Andrews — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 10:30:53 +0000

Many website owners concentrate on getting hits to their website while forgetting that it’s perhaps just as important to keep those visitors on the site for as long as possible. By keeping visitors on your website your chances of getting them to buy something, hit an advert, sign up, or read an article, or complete some other desired action increases. If you do get lots of visitors who leave as quickly as they came, then this could be an indication that there is something wrong with your website. By understanding why your visitors are leaving, you can change the website and make improvements.

Here are 10 of the main reasons why you could be losing visitors:

1) Poor Accessibility

Have you tested your website on the most popular web browsers – Internet explorer 7 and 8, Mozilla FireFox, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera? Your site should be tested on all. Your web developer should tell you which browsers they support. Website code needs to be changed slightly to cater for the way differnet browsers render web pages. If this is not done pages may not render correctly and a website that looks cool in FireFox may look rubbish in Internet Explorer.

No matter how great the website is, it is completely useless if the visitors are unable to access it. They have no option but to leave. Browser incompatibility is one of the prime reasons why websites fail to be accessible.

2) Confusing Navigation

Ever been on a website and become frustrated by not being able to find what you want quickly and easily. No matter how flashy a website looks, if a potential customer cannot find what they are looking for they will leave and probably not come back. Navigation is a determining factor of how visitors browse through the website to find information. Devote plenty of time and attention to design your navigation system. Make pages easy to find, include a good search facility. Get a friend to critic the website and tell you how easy it is to find what they need; perhaps set them a task to find something and ask them how easy it was to do so. Listen to their comments and if necessary re-think your navigation and make it more intuitive.

3) Over Advertising

Advertising is the main way to generate revenue for websites, especially websites that are not selling a product or a service. However, too much advertising can be highly irritating for visitors and make them leave in frustration. Before you plaster adverts all over your site, think about your target audience, what they will be interested in, and put them in subtle places where they will get noticed but not become distracting!

4) Inadequate Information

Think about what information your visitors will be looking for and make it easy for them to find it. Visitors come to a website looking for something, or for some information and when they don’t find what they are looking for, they just choose to leave. It is very important to understand your industry audience and know their needs and requirements.

5) Slow Loading Pages

This really is one of the most common complaints of visitors leaving a website. The connection speed of users also influence this. Therefore, it is important that you design pages that load easily even on slow Internet connections. Use Google Analytics to determine the percentage of users who have slow or fast Internet connections. Make sure is you are using a CMS such as Drupal or WordPress, that any new plugin you install does not slow your website up. The more “stuff” you have on a website, the slower it will become.

6) Automatic Audio and Video Play

Background music as soon as you open a website can be extremely annoying. Video plugins which start automatically are also just as irritating for visitors. So why are they becoming so popular? Leave the option for the users to decide whether they want to watch it or not and it’s best not to have such items start automatically on page load. Make sure your visitors can control music and video on your website. Visitors can often get irritated with the uncontrolled music and videos and leave the website altogether, even if the website was good enough.

7) Out of date Information, Product and Services

Visitors will stop coming if you do not have up to date items on your website. Make sure that you regularly review website content. Remove out of date information and add up to date content. Remove any products or services that you no longer have or provide. If a customer comes to your website or does make that phone call only to be told or receive a message “sorry its not in stock”, they probably will not come back very quickly.

8 ) Spamming Website Subscribers

Ever signed up to a website and then become irritated by the number of pointless emails they send you? Annoying isn’t it! If you are lucky enough to have someone sign up for a newsletter or offers email, then make sure any information you send to them is relevant and not too frequent. Repeatedly sending out emails of special offers to website subscribers too often could affect a visitor’s decision to return or not and simply just hack them off.

9) Poor Customer Service

If your customer makes an enquiry via your website, make sure you reply as soon as possible. I was once making decisions on which web hosting company to use for my customers; with so many out there it was a difficult decision. In the end I was swayed to my choice by the speed of response to questions I had, from the company I finally chose. Slow response to website customer enquires will definitely lose you customers.

10) Payment Options/Security

Customers want to know that they can trust you with their financial information. Choose a payment provider that offers a secure way to transit orders and credit card information – such as Google Checkout or PayPal. If possible, offer more than one payment option to give your customers the ability to choose how they will pay. Make sure your website is secure and where necessary uses https and security certificates. Advertise the fact that your website is secure for online payments too, have a page that explains how it is secure if necessary.You may also like to read:

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