5 Ways Your Website Is Driving Visitors Away

According to Netcraft, there are more than 644 million active websites on the Internet, and it’s safe to say that there are a lot of terribly designed websites in the bunch. So how do you know if you have a website is driving visitors away in droves? Our San Diego web design and development experts share the five most common website mistakes.

1. Visually Painful Design

   Let’s start with a basic fact. If your website isn’t easy on the eyes, people aren’t going to look at it for long. Whether it’s low-contrast color choices, too many color choices, overcrowded pages, or text that’s too small to read, basic design issues can make your page look both unpleasant and unprofessional.

2. Sluggish Load Times

   Users can find just about everything on the Internet, and often have many choices when it comes to finding information about a single product or service. So, if your site is taking too long to load, visitors will likely leave and get what they need somewhere else. Make sure your website is coded properly so that it loads quickly on all browsers.

3. Auto-Playing Sound

   If there’s one thing that visitors often find obnoxious, it’s a website that automatically plays a sound, music or video. It seems innocent enough, but, due to differences in users’ volume settings, it can often startle people or, as mentioned above, cause the page to load at extremely slow rates. Audio and video can be advantageous depending on your product or service, but let the user choose to hit “play”.

4. Infinitely-Scrolling Pages

   Visitors on the web expect to get their content rather quickly. If your pages are exceptionally long in their length, most people just won’t bother with them. When it comes to content, our San Diego SEO specialists say that it’s a balancing game. It’s important to have a lot of valuable and quality content for the user, but it must also be easy to find. Consider splitting your content into multiple pages, or add headers, bullet points, and numbering to help guide the reader to the most important information. 

5. Lack of Mobile Compatibility

   How many times have you searched for a product or service from your phone or tablet at home, even when a desktop computer is in the next room? Probably too many to count, and you’re not the only one. Studies report that more than 60% of web traffic comes from mobile devices. With the number of mobile searchers increasing, and Google adding mobile compatibility into their ranking algorithm, it’s extremely important to make sure that your website is mobile friendly.

Are you worried that you’re not getting the most out of your website? Get a free website audit today from Saba, Inc., a trusted San Diego SEO and online marketing company. Call 858-277-1717 to get started.