The last emotion you want to inspire in the users visiting your website is frustration; however, when visitors enjoy the interface, structure, and features of your website, that will automatically make them feel like you care about their experience, and they might be more inclined to give you their business.

Below are some of the most annoying traits of any website that might rub your users the wrong way or even have them abandon your website altogether and turn to the competitors instead! If your website is guilty of any of the sins below, no worries! Everything can be fixed or improved, so keep reading to learn how.

It’s Not Mobile-Friendly

It’s extremely likely that your client will look up your website on their phone at some point. Even if your website is not mobile-friendly, it will still get displayed on a smaller screen, but it will appear as a miniature version of your desktop website that will require a lot of scrolling, and pinching in and out, which will greatly frustrate your users and can even lose you a few.

How to fix: Unfortunately, for this issue there is no quick fix. Your website needs to be re-designed and re-developed from the ground up. In the past, it was common to have 2 versions of a website – one for the mobile view and one for the desktop view. This is no longer recommended as it’s expensive and cumbersome to host and maintain two websites. A single responsive website is the way to go and has become the industry standard.

It Makes it Hard for People to Contact You

It doesn’t matter how complete and full of information your website is, your users will still likely need to reach out to ask specific questions. Some people are just not interested in going through pages of FAQs and downloading multiple brochures to get the information they need. Users will get frustrated if you make it hard to contact your business. There should be a very clear way to contact you, and it should be accessible from multiple points of the website.

How to fix: Add your contact info to the most obvious places where people tend to look for it: navigation, footer, and contact page.

It Loads Very Slowly

For any other issues to even become noticeable, your website first needs to load up to the user’s device. Internet speed keeps getting faster and faster, website optimization techniques keep getting more sophisticated, and your website must keep up. Studies show that most people will abandon your website if it’s not loaded in 3 seconds. At the very least they will get impatient and frustrated. The goal should be more in the 1-1.5 seconds range for the first meaningful content load.

How to fix: The worst offenders of the loading speed issue tend to be images. If you maintain your own website and like to add images, make sure that they are sized and optimized properly, as a couple of full-resolution images, even taken with a phone added to a single page, can make your website next to unusable. For other loading speed fixes, you will probably need to reach out to your developer. They will likely perform some testing on your website and suggest things like code optimization, upgrading your hosting service, proper loading of assets like fonts and third-party scripts, and other measures based on your particular issues. Interested in getting your website evaluated? Contact our web department!

Popup Overload

There is nothing more frustrating than being in the middle of reading an article and getting a popup that covers up the entire page and makes you lose your spot. Personally, whatever offer is being presented on the popup, I will automatically dislike it before even finding out what it is. There are ways to make a popup a lot less annoying and therefore make it work better for you!

How to fix: Ideally, a popup:

• Should not cover the entire page, but instead be displayed in a less invasive way with other techniques of attracting attention to itself (for example contrasting color, animation, subtle sound effect on opening)
• Should not reappear in the same session after the user clicked out of it.
• Should have a way to be brought back up if clicking out was unintentional (for example, with a minimized button that has a relevant label: “View Current Special,” “Read Important Announcement,” etc.)

Other ideas for communicating important and time-sensitive information on your website are top or bottom message bars that fit with the website’s structure; adding a new section or image banner to the homepage, and introducing a non-invasive popup that follows the guidelines described above.

It Features Content Shifts

You’re reading a headline on the banner and are about to click a compelling call to action button that takes you to a contact form. Suddenly, as your cursor is hovering over the button, the banner unexpectedly changes, and you end up clicking on a completely different button or even a sponsor ad that takes you away from the website altogether! How frustrating is that? All content changes on your website should be user-controlled – that includes rotating banners, scrolling testimonials, and auto-playing videos and sounds.

How to fix: Remove auto-playing functionality for any content that contains information; add play/pause buttons for all elements that move around the page; pause any animation when the user is hovering over the element.

In Conclusion

Putting yourself in your user’s shoes while clicking through your website is important. If you’re noticing any areas for improvement that could enhance the browsing experience for your virtual guests, it’s worth bringing them up with your developer and asking for suggestions. If you maintain your own website, we hope the tips in this brief overview will inspire you to skim your website for mild annoyances and address them to ultimately help you improve your digital presence.