Traffic

Do you know why your visitors are abandoning your website?

Here are 6 top factors that will push potential customers away from your website and into the arms of your competition:

1. Poor Navigation

Is your website hard to navigate through?

When customers are directed to your website they want to be able to find what they are looking for quickly and easily.

We are not just talking about a few minutes here, we are really talking about seconds, because that it all it takes for a customer to get frustrated, especially when they are shopping online.

Also keep in mind that if you designed your own webpage, you may not even realise how confusing it could be to other people. If this is the case, it may help to have someone else look at it to see if they can move their way around it with ease.

Top tips:

  • Avoid putting anything on your page that doesn’t have a distinct purpose
  • Keep your navigation links in one place
  • Have a logical flow to your navigation
  • Use strong call to actions to steer your customers to their objective
  • Use clear, strong, easy to read fonts

2. Ad Overload

Pop ups, flashing ads, automatically playing videos and text that fills their entire browser is immediately going to persuade your customers to look elsewhere.

While running ads on your website can be a great way to build your revenue, it should never be the entire purpose of your site. It would be much more valuable to your business to turn your leads into customers rather than bombarding them with a constant influx of advertising.

Top Tips:

  • An ad should not be the first thing that your visitors see
  • Minimise pop-up ads or try to not have them cover up valuable content
  • Avoid ads that take up a lot of room
  • Keep them discreet, relevant and tasteful

 3. Poor Content Structure

Is the information on your website easy to find?

Research has found that nearly 50 percent of sales are lost because potential customers are not able to find what they are looking for.

To avoid this, make your content easy to read and understand and immediately highlight the benefits and services that you offer. Things that may seem obvious to you may not be to other people, so this is another good instance where you might want to have someone else review your content.

Remember, you are competing with thousands if not millions of other websites and in order for yours to really stand out and be appealing, you have to make everything super simple to understand.

Top tips:

  • Use bold headings and subheadings that attract customers and clearly outline your intention
  • Provide all the important information that your customers need in one place
  • Group similar content in a clear manner
  • Include introductory content or step by step instructions
  • Ensure that your content provides value to your customers

4. Sensory Overload

Having written content, audio and visual content can be a sensory overload for your visitors and may distract them from the task at hand.

Time and time again, studies have proven that the simpler you keep things, the higher the conversion rate, so try not push too much information down your visitors throats all at once. Instead, allow visitors to choose where they want to go and what type of information they want to read or hear about.

Top Tips

  • Avoid having autoplay videos, instead give visitors the option to play or not
  • Give pop ups and other content boxes like banners a clear exit feature
  • Avoid music on your website, especially if it is not relevant to your services
  • Think about sticking to one format- video, audio or content
  • Have 1-2 clear objectives for every page

5. Subscribing or Registering 

Forcing visitors to register or subscribe to read your content is another sure fire way to have them abandon your website. While registering for some services may be necessary, the first step should be getting them engaged.

The same goes for pop-ups or other content boxes that ask visitors to sign up to an email list or subscribe to some type of service, whether it is free or paid.

While collecting emails is valuable, try to give visitors an option and allow them to interact with the site first before asking them to sign up or enter their details.

Top tips:

  • If a visitor must register, give them a free sample or giveaway
  • Avoid putting up barriers that require your visitors to take action
  • Offer some value to visitors who don’t want to register or subscribe just yet
  • Explain the benefits that subscribing will offer them

6. No Updates

Updating the content of your website is crucial to keeping visitors engaged- let’s face it, no one wants to read a post from 1999.

While you don’t want to be constantly updating your layout or design, you do want to be keeping your content fresh and exciting. Also, as new technologies, design ideas and colours become trendy you should also try to update your website to show that you are staying relevant.

A constantly updated website also reassures visitors to know that there is someone behind the site who is actually monitoring and keeping track of everything.

Top Tips:

  • Update the content regularly, but keep it relevant and not repetitive
  • Try adding a blog to help keep your site updated with topical information
  • Avoid using “Under construction” or “Coming Soon” templates

Understanding why your visitors leave is just as important as understanding what is making them stay.

Why not take a moment this week to tweak your website and see if you can improve your abandonment rates.