Web Design Tactics that Turn Visitors Away

Most people can suffer through unprofessional looking websites if they’re able to easily get to the information they’re looking for. But there are some web design tactics, many advocated by marketing gurus, that can cause people to leave your site.

Forced Registration

Sites use this tactic to get visitor’s contact information before letting them see the good stuff. While its true that building a list is an important part of a profitable online business, forcing visitors to give their information is counter intuitive to the idea of  “opt in”. Sure they give their information, but they did it to see the next page, not to continue to get emails from you. Many visitors (myself included) often simply leave a page if I have to give my email before seeing the content. Without knowing what the site has in store, how does a person know if they want email.

The reality is many people get annoyed when content is held for ransom. Instead put the list sign up form on your information page where visitors can sign up after they see your great content. If you’re going to lead with a registration page, at the very least give an option not register and yet still be able to access the information. Better to have a visitor and not get the email, than to turn a visitor away annoyed…and still not have the email.

Difficult Site Navigation

I’m sometimes surprised at how hard it can be navigate some websites. The links are hard to find or don’t make sense. One problem is poor planning of the site. Another issue is that I think some people forget that search engines index many pages of a site, so visitors may enter the site from a page other than the home page. No matter what page a visitors enters the site on, they need to be able to get to all other pages of the site. One way to really help visitors out is to have a clear navigation on each page. Even better have a site map. It makes it easy for visitors to find what they want, and search engines love them.

No or Hard to Find Contact Information

I was at a blog this morning and wanted to contact the owner about interviewing her for my podcast. There were two sources of navigation along the top, none of which said “contact”. I looked along the sidebar and the footer. No contact link. I clicked on the “About” page and found a contact form. So the information was there, but it took time to find it. Some you may be saying it should be obvious to look on the About page. But if you want to make money online, don’t make your visitors have to work to get what they want on your site. Not all visitors are willing to take the time to search your site especially when there are millions of other sites offering the same information and who have the contact info displayed on every page.

I think some people hide their contact information because they don’t want to be inundated with questions from visitors. But those visitors have money and a little contact can convince them to stay with you instead of moving on to the next site. Also potential customers are not the only ones who use the contact information.  I have had media contact me through my website for interviews that have led to great  PR.

When I first started Work-At-Home Success in 1998, there weren’t very many other work-at-home websites on the net. In fact, I can only think of one other. I could get away with a hard to use site. But today there are thousands of sites and more coming online everyday. People are looking for information…information they can trust. So having a site that is easy to enter and use is crucial. And because people need to know there is a real person behind the scenes, making it easy for them to provide feedback, ask questions, and yes, even complain, is also important.