There are actually factors in our website that can make it easier for us to lose customers. In general, we should be able to grab visitor’s attention in less than five seconds and this is a critical period of time that we need to take advantage of. We need to use images and text properly. Many websites don’t load completely in ten seconds, especially due to slow processing of code and data in the servers. Big graphics are less of an issue today, especially for users who use high-speed broadband Internet connection and 4G LTE network. Good codes are vital in managing data related to our business and people will hate it if the code-heavy website refuses to load quickly.
Websites could discourage potential customers if it doesn’t contain enough contact information. In this case, people won’t be able to easily and quickly get in touch with the company’s representatives. The most common advice is to put all contact information, such as phone numbers, email, physical address and others to any page. A particularly clever way to show contact information is by using interesting images that can be placed at specific places on the site. Images could attract attention better than standard text, so we should consider using them properly on more strategic areas on the website.
People won’t be encouraged to return if they find that the website is very difficult to navigate. We shouldn’t try to be too creative with navigational features. Although innovation is essential in web design, it is still important for us to prioritize on simplicity and common sense. As an example, menus should expand properly to sub menus or even sub sub menus. However, complex and unintuitive architecture can discourage people immensely. It is important for us to avoid using bad non-HTML features. As an example, some server-side codes can cause sluggishness even on powerful computers and broadband connections.
Huge splash pages can discourage many people and we should be aware that if we want to get our messages across, we may have less than 1- seconds to do that. In this case, not many people want to wait longer to watch our fancy animations. Pop up ads could also be considered as huge turn offs and many people install pop-up blockers, because they are annoying enough. If we want to use pop-ups, it is important to make them less intrusive. Instead, we should use pop-under windows to avoid annoying our potential customers.
Sideways scrolling can be quite damaging to the overall user experience, especially if our potential customers have smaller displays, such as smartphones and tablets. In this case, we should make sure that our website can be used properly on lower resolutions, if not; people will need to scroll sideways to get more content. It is a quite annoying thing to do and we could lose visitors really quickly. It is important for us to make the whole layout matches properly with any resolution.