10 things that drive visitors away from websites

Scott Morgan
neurocyber search engine optimisation

You wouldn't do anything to drive visitors away, would you? Well, what if you were doing something to alienate your visitors, yet were unaware of it. It's easily done and there is a multitude of ways to frighten off visitors to your site, from slow loading pages to bad navigation

If you can't keep your visitors at your web site, because you've made it too hard or too awkward for them to view your site then you're failing at the first hurdle, so to speak. Remember first impressions count, if you can't engage your visitor within seconds of them arriving at your site, they'll be gone. Put yourself in your visitors shoes and analyse your site objectively, if you find your site less than friendly or usable, do some thing to improve the situation. Here's some things that may alienate your visitors......

Really long pages. People generally dislike having to scroll down a page. Make sure your pages are as short as you can make them, this will also reduce the html file size and so reduce the time people have to wait for your page to download. It's acceptable to have some long pages on your site, if breaking up a page destroys the fluidity of the content
Web sites designed at a high resolution. Not everybody has a large monitor, so make sure you take into account those people browsing at a low resolutions, such as 480x640 and 800x600. People dislike having to scroll from side to side to read sentences of information, so make sure you test your web site at different resolutions early on in the development cycle, before it becomes to much of a chore to have to totally rework your site because only 15% of visitors can see your site correctly
Having to download a 'plug-in' just to view your site. Most people will not go to the trouble of downloading a 'plug-in' unless they really, really want to view your site, compounding this is the fact that most newbies will not know how to go through the 'plug-in' installation process. If you do use a 'plug-in', think of all the potential visitors your loosing and ask yourself if it's essential to the well being of your site
Being attacked by 'pop-up' windows. People surfing the web have a low tolerance of 'pop-up' windows, you might get away with one 'pop-up', per visitor, per site visit, especially if it's relevant (like a newsletter sign up box) anything else will just annoy your visitor. If you must use some form of 'pop window' consider a 'pop-under', it's less intrusive
Asking lots of irrelevant questions on 'submit' forms. The more details you ask people to supply, e.g. on a newsletter sign-up form, a site membership form, the less the response rate there will be. Unless you need all the information you're expecting people to type in, don't ask for it
Slow loading 'splash pages'. Not many people hang around for slow loading 'splash pages', especially if it means waiting for a the big Flash file embedded in it to load. If you have a 'splash page' consider getting rid of it and make your home page (index.htm) your sites main point of entry
Having too many animated gifs. Less is more, when it comes to animation on your pages. Ask yourself if you really need all those cute flashing images. If you can't do without them, then one animated gif per viewing area is all you should really display
Too little contrast between text and background colour. The best combination of text and background colour is probably black text on a white background. Anything that makes it hard for the visitor to read your content is not good. Remember that your links will change colour once a visitor has clicked on them so make sure there is still good contrast after any links have been clicked
Bad navigation. Having poorly configured navigation menu's or inconsistent navigation can frustrate visitors to your site. Make sure your navigation links are clearly laid out and stick to the layout right across your site. If you use JavaScript or Java navigation applets then you should be aware that some people may have these technologies turned off in their browser and as a result will be unable to navigate your site. Consider using supplementary text links at the bottom of your page to overcome this problem
Having large parts of your site under construction. A web site is never really complete but having page after page containing nothing more than a flashing animated gif is an immediate turn off for the average visitor, even if you do have some pages with good content