7 Ways to Annoy Visitors to Your Website

No matter how much you love your website, viewers are going to see it differently. There are many things you can do to your website that you might think will help that in fact put visitors off. Annoy them too much and not only do they leave quickly, they don’t come back.

1. Start with a splash page.

I remember in my college website design classes my professor was huge on splash pages. He thought they were a great way to introduce a website.

Real world?

Splash pages are annoying. Search engines don’t like them. Visitors don’t like them. Plus you don’t have that much control over where people come into your site, so not all visitors will see your fancy schmancy splash page.

But when people type in your domain name they don’t want to have to click through to get to the actual website. There’s no need for that pretty Flash animation sharing what your site is about. Just start your site on the home page and skip the splash.

2. Slow loading.

People are impatient. They don’t want to wait for the content of your website to load. They want to get what they’re after quickly. More than 7 seconds, plus or minus depending on the individual’s patience, and they are away from your site and off to another.

3. Confusing navigation.

Ever get lost driving somewhere? It’s frustrating.

The navigation of your website shouldn’t give that lost feeling. They shouldn’t feel as though they need to ask for directions on how to get to different parts of your website. It should be consistent throughout the site.

4. Too many ads.

You know how many ads are in your typical magazine or newspaper? People don’t put up with that many online. Don’t overload your site with ads.

A large part of the annoyance with online ads is how intrusive they can be. It’s not like print ads. Online ads can talk. They can be animated. They can quite simply drive people nuts.

Overuse of ads, even when tolerated, can even lead to “ad blindness,” where people don’t notice ads at all. Keep your use of ads to appropriate levels if you want them to be effective.

5. Site appears to be out of date.

When was the last time you updated the copyright notice on your site? Have you made reference to the day or year anyplace else on your site?

Having a date on your content can make it appear to be out of date. There’s a simple piece of PHP code you can put on pages to make the year update itself, which is handy for copyright notices.

<? print(Date("Y")); ?>

But if you’re calling something new for 2010, November or whatever else, it will look outdated if people are looking at it outside that time frame. Make sure you change or remove dates when they start to look a little old.

Blogs can find this particularly challenging, as most put a date on the post. If you have evergreen content on your blog it can help to periodically update it or consider having it be on an undated page rather than a post.

6. Website appears incomplete.

Don’t say your site is “under construction” or anything like that, even if it is. Most sites are a chronic work in progress.

If a page isn’t done, don’t put it up yet. You can add it in when it’s ready to be seen by the public. You really aren’t drawing people in by saying that something is coming soon unless it’s something really important to them. If they’re just casually shopping on your site or seeking out particular information, they aren’t going to be that interested in waiting for the update.

If you’re trying to build anticipation, give plenty of information. Make it interesting. “Coming soon” just doesn’t cut it.

7. Irrelevant content.

While a website as a whole can cover a huge range of topics, keep individual pages on topic. Don’t switch from a discussion of the butterfly eggs hatching in your back yard to discuss who you’re voting for in the next election, unless you’re really good at relating politicians to butterflies.

Random ramblings rarely work on a website. Most people just can’t make them that interesting. You’re far more likely to come off as incoherent.

Running a website is a lot of work. It’s very rarely a case of set and forget. Take some time to put in the effort needed to create a really great website.