No website will ever be perfect (unfortunately), but we’ve compiled a list of little tweaks and changes you can check on your website to make sure you’re not irritating your visitors. Go through this list of our top 8 pet peeves and change what you can to create a more usable, less annoying, and generally more enjoyable website that your visitors will be ecstatic to visit:
1. Microcopy – Do you require a form for your website visitors to receive information or to contact you? One of the best things you can do to these seemingly pesky forms is to make sure the “submit” button you most likely include, is modified to state exactly what happens when a user sends their information. Does the form actually send an email so a sales rep? Say so with a button that states, “Send my request”. Does your form subscribe someone to your newsletter? Maybe your button should say, “Sign me up”. This little change can help your visitors feel more comfortable using your forms.
2. Company information inaccessibility – We’re not here to bash flash (though that is quite catchy, huh?), but if you must have your Flash website up and running, just be sure your important company information is in readable, copy-and-pasteable text so users can quickly skip on over to your site and grab the information they need. Too often are companies’ contact information and phone number, along with employee bios and titles, stuck right into Flash (or in an image), making it difficult for customers to record your information, or members of the press to grab the information they need to promote you!
3. Goose hunt for company information – Not only should your company info be readable and copy-and-pasteable, but it must be easy to find. If a customer comes to your custom t-shirt design webpage and wants to make an order now, they should be able to find your number or email now. Never make a customer chase down your contact info, because at some point they’ll stop and go somewhere else. And you will be sad.
4. Pixelated images – No website should ever have pixelated images on their website. No excuses.
5. Not knowing what to do – When visitors come to your site they should understand what to do within the first 10 seconds or less. If a person searches for local car repair shops and clicks on a link, they should be able to find out how to contact the company within one click. Nothing makes a visitor leave your page faster than not finding the information they are looking for. Get into the mind of the user of your site. Figure out all the reasons they might come to your site and try to address them in a way that makes the site functional and pleasing to use.
6. Death to dropdown menus – These pesky little menus will end up costing you a ton on development costs while delivering no value to the experience of your website. In fact, the annoyance factor of difficult-to-navigate menus may decrease the usage of your site, costing you more than you can calculate. Simple, usable menus will always provide the most accessibility and reduce the frustration that users feel when trying to jump around your website.
7. Use your words wisely – You should be treating your homepage as your storefront. Would you clutter the windows packed full of signage, stickers, clever phrases, images, etc.? By cutting down the text on your homepage (and throughout your website), you’ll make the text that’s left even more readable and attention-grabbing. If there’s information overload on your website, there really can’t be any information download.
8. No visual indication of context – It’s easy to assume that every visitor to your website will enter from the homepage and navigate from there, creating an easy-to-follow path. More often than not, visitors will come to specific pages on your website from search engines, meaning they’ll need a quick way of determining exactly where they’ve landed on your website. This could happen in a visual manner with arrows or tab indicators, or it could mean the use of bread crumbs. Either way, it’s important to always tell a website browser where they are now, so they know where to go next.
Your email is never published or shared. Required fields are marked *.