You want people to hang out on your website. To peruse your wares and get a feel for the climate and atmosphere of your company. You worked hard to establish good vibes in your company and the goal is to draw in consumers with that siren call. However, without actively and skillfully portraying that on your website, all of those good intentions are a waste of your time. Let’s fix that.
There are five primary reasons people jump out of websites. They can’t find what they need, can’t figure out how to contact you, think the site is awful to navigate or just look at, can’t get anything to load (slooooow), or are annoyed by spammy features.
At Bat: Content
It is imperative that you have enough content on your website to adequately explain what you offer, why you offer it, and how it’s going to solve the problem of your consumer. As exciting as a scavenger hunt is, consumers don’t tend to be big fans when they just want some information. Don’t make them work for it. Be succinct, direct, and professional (and professional does not mean stuffy; it simply means respectful and authoritative in this sense).
On Deck: Contact
This should really go without saying, but sometimes it does get overlooked. Have an obvious place that folks can get in touch with you through. A contact form, phone number, email address…make it easy for them to troubleshoot their issues so that they can do what they’re there to do: buy stuff/subscribe/give you money for your services.
In the Hole: Design
We recently dug into this one and why it’s so important to the functionality and success of your website, so we’ll just touch on it here. Your website must be user-friendly. Keep your menu and homepage straightforward, clean, and lovely to look at. Don’t let clutter into your website. Clutter is a huge consumer turn-off. Again, make it easy for them to find what they need so that they come back and refer their friends and family to you. That is golden marketing.
Foul Ball: Speed
We are an instant gratification society. No one’s denying that. Make sure you keep that in mind with your website. If images, information, ANYTHING is slow to load, users will bounce out. They hate waiting. We all do. Get your developer on this so that your site loads quickly and flawlessly each and every time.
Strike Out: Spam (not the canned kind)
Let’s talk for second about ads. And pop-ups. And videos or sound bites or music that automatically play when your site loads. People despise this stuff.
Imagine that you’re sitting in a quiet waiting room scrolling around and, to your great misfortune, you click on a site that starts automatically playing a very loud, very obnoxious rendition of Fur Elise. You panic. Close the window. Fumble around to turn the volume down. And you never go back to that site. Ever.
We realize that auto-playing videos and sounds aren’t technically spam. But they’re unwanted media jumping in the face of the consumer, similar to a pop-up or animated ad. Just don’t do it. There’s no quicker way to scare away potential consumers than to actually and physically frighten them.
Clean up those five pieces of your website and users will have no problem relaxing in your digital space.