What makes visitors leave your site? Overview of the most common mistakes
Every site owner sometimes can see a problem, when many of its visitors quickly leave the resource for unknown reasons. In any case, you must fight for reducing bounce rate. And it’s very often when content is ok, but you still lose visitors.
Most common reasons are described below. Please read all of the text (or at least sub-headings), and make sure your site is all right.
The information does not meet the user’s request
Your text does not contain any information for user? This is the reason of failure №1. No matter how beautiful your site. If the user wants to know how much it costs vacation in Italy, and in the text – a long argument about how beautiful this country is and how cool that you finally go there, he will find another resource.
Do not pour “water” in their materials. Share with user specific information that exactly matches the title of the article and the internal expectations of the user.
Not readable text
Long paragraphs, no discharge and visual “islands” – that is, what exactly will force users to leave your site.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing to add, but when there is nothing to remove.
The volume of the text is not very important. I always read articles when I finish it. Then, usually, I get rid near 30-50% of text.
Too much seo keywords
It is also one of the most common mistakes that we constantly face in our practice. A holdover the past. The time when density of search keys on the page played a major role in the search promotion. But many things has changed: the search engine algorithms have become much “smarter”, the number of ranking factors has increased many times, the search learned to indexing the latent semantic, and – most importantly – users have become more demanding to your content. But despite this, many sites are still the same. And they do not care that the texts, stuffed the keys can not be read.
Duplication of information posted on other sites
If your information is duplicate information posted on other sites, it is unlikely to be read, even if it is written in other words or with more beautiful language. The texts on your site should be unique. But many people don’t understand “unique”. This means that you must give unique knowledge or service to users, not just unique text. But where we can find ideas for unique materials if so many sites already have good articles on most of questions?
You just need to show a little imagination and begin to think more broadly. Here we are, for example, recently decided to write an article on the theme “Recipe of the selling text.” Such material is a lot in the network , dozens of copywriters share their tips of writing texts. And how we can create unique content in this case? We just wrote that there is no selling texts and explain why (if the business itself is hopeless, no one, even the most magnificent text in the world can not save him).
Using a large number of terms without explanation
Open you a secret: not all users who visit your site, understand your subject just as well as you. Surprised? Then begin to add acronyms to all difficult terms or write small definitions.
Outdated data
All of you know that quite recently there was another update anti-spam algorithm “Penguin”. After that, many seo-optimizers rushed to search for information on how to not suffer from his sanctions (including me). However, the search failed, because at that time, at the request of “how to protect themselves from Penguin 2.0» Google gave few materials. And all of them were dedicated to the protection of the first penguin. What at that time was no longer relevant. Conclusion: watch out for events that occur in your themes and update your content in time.
Misspellings and grammer mistakes
Most people are ready forgive you your errors in the text only in two cases: if your content is of particular value (for example, describes some new problem or a new approach) or if you are a recognized authority in your field and readers have so much love that it is not pay attention to your minor tweaks. In other cases, people will rush to close the page.
Unreadable font
Select the font for the site is very easily. Note the order of action: take the font, make up the article and begin to read it. You feel uncomfortable? Want to look away to the side? Dazzled in the eyes? So, we need to choose another font. For more accurate results in testing, you can use several people. You also need to check colors of fonts, line height, margin between paragraphs.
Incorrect layout and unprofessional design
Do not create a false impression about your professionalism. Make sure that in the text all was smooth and neat. Test your template in all resolutions and all popular browsers.
Man meets on clothes, and the site – the design. Resource with cheap unprofessional design immediately casts doubt on his credibility and plausibility of the data placed on it.
Bad navigation
Imagine you are in the deep forest without a map, compass and mobile phone. You really want to get home, but there is no clue. You shout “Hey”, but no one can hear you. Discomfort, is not it? About the same feel and your users when they are wandering through the dark back streets of your site. From this advice: do not test their strength, carefully think the structure of the navigation and make sure that it is clear to all users.
No search field on site
Take care about the presence of this element on your site – make life a little easier for your users.
Too much advertising
Advertising – strong irritant. Today, it is known to almost everyone. Pop-up banners, flashing animation, silly cheap news headlines – if too many of these elements on the page, the user have a feeling to quickly leave the resource. In this case, the “banner blindness” not working.
Slow page loading
Modern Internet users are very impatient. They will not wait for full loading of page, and immediately move to another site.
To perform any action, you need to register
I’m sure many of you are faced with the following situation. Do you want to download something, watch or participate in the survey, and then gets out this hateful window: “To perform an action, you need to register.” 99% of users after this phrase close page of the site, experiencing a strong surge of irritation.
Musical background or random playing video
Yes, you will not believe, but in the network, there are still sites that use musical background. And you know what’s interesting? This element is probably even larger irritant than the abundance of advertising. Annoying spinning circular composition is capable to ruffle even the calmest person.
Unreadable captcha
Captcha should be clear and understandable to anyone. More preferably, it contains digits, but no letters of English, since the older generation often has difficulties in finding foreign characters on the keyboard. In general, if you can, it is better to remove it entirely. This is why I like google recaptcha, because it uses just checkbox
Conclusion
Here are the most common mistakes, due to which the most users have a feeling of irritation and a desire as soon as possible close page.
If you have found on your website the presence of at least one of them, it is recommended to take a fix it. If no, congratulations. You have created a good foundation, which will be the basis for further progress.
Very good list. I use this as a check list and apply it when writing new posts. Cheers, Bob.
Very nice article! I have made at least 2 of the above mistakes… So rushing back to correct them!
A huge mistake for 2017 and beyond is when websites are not optimized for mobile devices. Websites need to be responsive to capture all possible visitors from computers, smart phones and tablets.
#7 Most people are ready forgive you your errors in the text only in two cases: if your content is of particular value (for example, describes some new problem or a new approach) or if you are a recognized authority in your field and readers have so much love that it is not pay attention to your minor tweaks. In other cases, people will rush to close the page.
Spelling and Grammar mistakes are a major turn-off, and people just move on! There are only 2 reasons why readers will forgive you…1. if your content is of particular value (e.g. describes a new issue, or, a new approach to fixing one), or, if you are a recognized authority in your field and readers are so engraossed that they don’t pay attention to your errors. … just say in’… trade writing skils, for technical skills – if you’re interested.