Why do people leave a website?

We fight hard to win a customer. Planning, analysis, design, execution...the whole nine yards. But still, the customer chooses to leave your page. Just like page visits have some solid reasons behind them, page exits too, have some underlying commonalities. We look at some of them in this article.

1. Bad navigation

This is the foremost among the reasons that cause user frustration. Complex or inconsistent navigation can cause users to feel confused, helpless, or worse, angry- something you do not want potential customers to be feeling.

The things to keep in mind are

• To not provide visual elements that are not clear in defining where the user is and what they’re supposed to do next

• Don’t scatter your main navigation links around your site. Your website navigation should be logical, intuitive and easy to understand. For this, you could try grouping navigation elements in a central area. For larger websites, you could add a sitemap.

• Finally, don’t make your link text hard to understand. “Other links” is generally not a good choice for link text.

2. Too many ads

Firstly, ensure that ads are not the first thing that a visitor sees. It is important that ads do not cover up the content that attracted the visitors in the first place. Managing space is very important as there are ads that take up more space than the website content.

3. Bad content structure

Bad content structure can destroy your conversion and retention rates. Here, it’s important not to complicate things by distributing content across multiple pages that could be easily communicated on one page. Outlining and grouping content so that users don’t have to fish around, bold headings, highlighting keywords- these are some of the things that go a long way in adding to the usability quotient of your website.

4. Obtrusive use of Audio and Video

Most people value their ability to choose what content to absorb. Having a video or audio that loads automatically can potentially drive visitors away. Which means it is important not to force users to view a particular content. Because sometimes, even a simple paragraph can convey the content of a video.

5. Poor legibility

Excessive typos, abrasive colours, bad typography choices- all of this make up a poor user experience. Do not use typefaces that are unnecessarily elaborated, pixelated or have poor contrast. Also, excessive use of bright, fluorescent colours can be distracting and abrasive.

If you could ensure this and some pun on the way, the user would be all yours.  

7 things to know before you develop a website

You want to develop a website that will help your business get visibility, attract visitors and convert those visitors into customers. You need to design your website in such a manner that it reflects your business objective and gives customers precisely what they want. This means that you need to do some serious planning and homework before you really start your website. We look at some of the basic stuff that you need to know to ensure your website succeeds, in this article.

1. Purpose of your website

Remember you can’t change plea in the middle of an argument. You should have started out with a clear purpose in your mind and also the contours of how you are going to implement that. This is extremely important as many firms start out with some objective and end up doing something else altogether.

2. Domain and hosting

This is the first thing to do to get visibility. You need to choose a name that people can remember well and choose wisely and appropriately, as to whether you will use .com or .net or something else. As for hosting, choose a reliable looking at how much capacity you will need.

3. Technology

Discuss and finalise the technology that you want to use. This could depend on a number of factors and it finally boils down to what you want. The options are HTML5, CSS3, PHP, Jquery, Javascript etc.

4. Layout and colour

Colour affects the feel of your site. Neat layout is always preferred. Don’t forget about the footer too. A good website required equal focus on all aspects.

5. Content

Before the content, first create a sitemap and flowchart. As to the content, remember that your website needs to provide good and informative content to the users. Target certain keywords to rank high in search engines. The type of content like language, picture, video, etc has influence of how fast or how slow the website will load.

6. Ads and pop ups

Do not include too many advertisements in your website. If an advertisement is not necessary, just don’t put it there. As for pop ups, prevent them from appearing. It is the most annoying type of advertising because of slow loading and sometimes you can’t close it.

7. Cross browser capability

A good website has to be able to be viewed properly in all types of modern browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Safari.