Most websites fail to deliver a successful user experience. They fail to obtain visitors’ interest, encourage them through the sales funnel and complete conversions. They are difficult to navigate, generally unappealing for a number of reasons.
The good news is that most websites tend to fail for the same reasons. By avoiding common user experience (UX) mistakes, business owners and marketers can improve their customers’ experience and increase conversions.
Brian Lewis, director of optimization at SiteTuners, outlined The Deadly Dozen: 12 common UX Mistakes that Kill Conversions in a SEMRush webinar.
Assuming everyone is ready to buy. The mistake, exemplified by a huge “buy now” button on the home page, can be called the greedy marketing syndrome. Marketers attempt to push customers down the sales funnel. Most visitors are not ready to buy; they need to complete research first.
Forgetting that visitors need to solve a problem. Many visitors are not familiar with your products. Site visitors search for solutions to their problem, not products. Recognizing this, one pharmaceutical company allows visitor to shop by symptom in addition to shopping by product.
Terrible navigation. Some sites suffer from poor order of navigation headings, unclear headings and too many options. Lewis recommends not more than seven navigation bar headings since people generally have difficulty remembering more than seven items at once. Strong contrast between heading text and background can improve readability. The best navigation is based on where visitors wish to go – not where marketers want to send them. A “Get Quote” button on the far left is out of place and won’t increase conversions.
Lousy site search. About 30 percent of visitors use site search. Conversions are 50 percent higher for visitors using a site’s search feature, since those users are further along in the sales funnel. Returning hundreds of results – or zero results – for a product search is the virtual equivalent of telling the shopper you don’t have the product. A first-class site search suggests alternatives for misspellings.
Overemphasized featured products. Most visitors are probably not interested in the featured product, and they don’t know what “featured” means. Is it on sale or overstocked? Featured products can work in some instances and are most effective at the category level, but more often than not they simply place obstacles in front of visitors who are seeking other products.
Visual bullying. Our minds are hardwired to focus on what’s moving. Animations, auto-start videos and rotating sliders draw attention and distract visitors. Abundant, vivid colors and cluttered layouts also distract. Research by SiteTuners shows that rotating sliders decrease conversions. Marketers love them because they are a shortcut to telling many different stories, but viewers consider them distracting. They may work in certain situations, but testing is required to verify their benefits.
Being clever and vague. Cute taglines on homepages can befuddle visitors. The purpose of a home page is to communicate to the visitor where they are, state what you do and your value proposition, establish trust and send people down the funnel. Site-wide images, while becoming increasingly popular, may look pretty but often fail to identify the company or its offer.
Not establishing trust. Establishing trust is a main purpose of the home page. Brands can create trust through industry affiliations and awards, customer reviews and testimonials, privacy policies, product guarantees; and the business’s longevity.
Copywriting vomit. Marketers sometimes produce too much copy or place it in the wrong place. The homepage is not the place for abundant copy. It’s more appropriate on product pages. Other copy sins include industry jargon, acronyms and platitudes – as in “We take pride in customer service.”
Poor content format. Sites with poorly organized layouts are typically unread. Section headings, bolder and larger text, and succinct writing can gain the attention of online readers who tend to scan more than read, especially home pages.
Ignoring mobile visitor intent. The best mobile sites take into account the different intentions of mobile users and do more than just move desktop designs to mobile. For instance, Southwest Airlines realizes the intent of mobile users is to check in and check their flight status.
Poor mobile usability. Marketers and web designers should remember that smartphones are tiny, often hard to read and their users are frequently interrupted. Best practices call for optimizing images to avoid slow loading and making buttons the right size for small screens.
Bottom Line: Websites are one of the most important sales and marketing tools, often the most important. Sadly, websites frequently fail to offer adequate user experiences. By avoiding these common user experience mistakes, companies can gain the attention of visitors, send them down the sales funnel and increase conversions.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
