There’s no denying that in today’s market, having a website that is properly designed and executed is key. Poorly structured sites can cause many visitors to leave as soon as they hit your website. Maybe you’re looking into building a new site or perhaps redesigning your current one. In any case, here are a few reasons that people are leaving your site to take into consideration and learn from.

1. Slow Website Speed

We now live in a world dominated by speed, do you think people are going to wait for your site to download when they land on it? Gone are the days of waiting for an image to slowly load as it comes down your telephone wire bit by bit. We expect everything to happen before we’ve lifted our finger from clicking the link. So when presented with a list of sites that all want to sell us that amazing new product, if we’ve got enough time to go to the next link before the other one has loaded, that’s what we do. The rise in mobile usage is an important factor as it is easier than ever to exit a site that takes too long to visit, you are now just a swipe away from doing so. There are a few factors that affect the load time but they are simple to rectify. Supplying smaller images, optimising the load order of included content, increasing server power or moving a server to a more local location are all steps that can be taken to ensure your website is the Usain Bolt of the internet.

2. Poor Design

We’ve all heard the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover”, but at the end of the day when it comes to websites, we do. There are so many sites out there that have little or no thought when it comes to the design, but users do give it thought. This could affect whether or not they choose to stay on your site and learn more about you, or go somewhere different. Most users will instantly click the ‘back’ button if a website looks very outdated. Textured backgrounds, extremely vibrant colours, clashing palettes need to be carefully considered when designing your site. Design goes far beyond just making it look ‘nice’, it’s about encapsulating your brand and telling the user who you are before they’ve even started to read the content. If someone doesn’t see the value in your brand it’s so easy to click the next link in Google and never see your content again.

3. A clear call to action

This is a big one, especially if you don’t sell directly through your site. What is a ‘call to action’? It’s a big easy to read message telling your visitors what you want them to do next. Most of the time you want them to contact you, whether it’s a big friendly “Call us now on…” or a “get in touch” link leading to the contact page, once you have them that far, you can let them know exactly what they want and hopefully get a happy customer. So often these can be misleading and confuse the user, ultimately resulting in them leaving the site. Make sure whether through the design or message it is clear as possible and that the call to actions leads the user to their desired objective.

4. Not understanding your users

You have developed and designed a fantastic looking website, you have the call to actions in the right areas, the website works smoothly across all devices, but you still do not have great results. A major factor could be that the content and imagery is not relatable to your target audience. It’s critical we understand who our audience is, what device are using? What times do they visit most? What are areas in the world are they from? By knowing these factors and more it helps us dictate the content and imagery that we use and even the flow of the pages. It sounds simple but so often it can be overlooked and can be a big factor in why audiences leave your site without purchasing or leaving an enquiry.

5. Get to the point

A site needs to be simple, most people that are coming to buy a product aren’t specialists in that area. You don’t want to bore them with details, you need to let them know what they’ll get, not what you do to give them that. Apple did this with the iPod; what’s a better advert, “it can play mp3’s and has 1GB of storage” or “you can listen to 1000 songs”? It’s straight and to the point. Because of the rise in mobiles being used as a primary device, this makes this point critical, and without it, your website will not perform

Conclusion

It’s important to consider the above factors when looking for a new website or even looking at how to improve your current one, these are all simple but so many times they get overlooked and can cause dramatic results.

If you already have a website and want to know how it’s performing, you can get in touch with us.

There’s always room for improvement!