4 Things Visitors Hate to Find on a Website

4 Things Visitors Hate to Find on a Website Is your website filling your customers with anger? Avoid doing things your visitors hate.

Anyone who traffics the internet knows that most websites stink.

Whether they are hard to navigate, lack necessary information or are just plain ugly, the average website only does an average job. And despite the best efforts of designers, even higher-tier pages usually have at least one or two things wrong.

Even if aware, business owners are slow to acknowledge their own website’s flaws. But make no mistake — your site could be just as annoying to visitors as other sites are to you.

You can’t fix the issue until you take a look in the mirror. With the goal of improving your own visitor experience, learn to recognize the four most common things that people hate to find on a website.

Confusing Navigation

This should be the easiest thing to get right, but so many companies still stumble. Navigation should be simple and clearly marked.

But plenty of businesses still fail to highlight the key things they do and why a customer should be seeking their services. Too many bad restaurant websites use cutesy words when a simple “Menu” would do. The same goes for spas, or others offering beauty care, failing to just tell visitors what “Services” they offer. Or, worst of all, companies of all stripes forget to make it obvious in the navigation where they are located or how to contact them.

Incomplete Contact Information

Communication preferences will vary widely from one visitor to another. Some don’t need an immediate answer and prefer email. Others like social media. But many will just want to call you to get an instant answer to their question.

You need to have multiple contact options, each of which should be clearly listed. This means no old info or broken links to your social accounts — the scourge of many modern websites. Another good tip: if your number is local, visitors may not even bother calling from a different state, which can cost you business. So if you hope to ever serve anyone outside of the immediate area, it makes sense to get a toll-free number to make your business accessible to anyone in the country.

Music and Sounds

Your website should make no noise. None. This should be obvious. Nobody has ever gone to a website and been blown away by the dulcet Enya tones or world music playing in the background.

Yet, still the trend persists, driving away potential customers who would rather drive miles out of their way then spend one more second on your page enduring annoying sounds. Similarly, don’t include any videos that auto-play on arrival and never use navigation buttons that make playful noises when pressed.

Hard to Read

Many small businesses think that using their brand’s colors will be a fun way to spice up the content on their website — but it isn’t. Staying with your company color scheme is definitely great for logos, navigation menus and other major elements of a site’s design. But what we’re talking about is the actual text. There is a reason that almost everything you read online, or in print, is black text on white (or another very light color) background … it works. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel by putting yellow text on green background or use Victorian-era font. Your purple and blue logo may look great, but when you combine the two colors for copy, it just becomes illegible.

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by Chris London of Pixel Productions Inc. The Everything Design Company