Article Author Alain Parcan, Director of Marketing for Market Hardware, Inc, an NALP Consultant Member firm.
Have you ever visited a Website and been so disappointed by its functionality that you immediately moved on? What if your Website is similarly “turning off” your Website visitors right now?
It’s easy for landscape professionals to get caught up in the excitement of publishing their Website. Unsurprisingly, it’s also easy for that excitement to cloud judgment. So if you launched a new Website in the last few years, hopefully you took the time to avoid some of the common Website pitfalls.
Here are the 5 reasons visitors might hate your Website:
- It’s not mobile-friendly. More than half of the people visiting your Website are doing so from their phones. And they expect to find a clean, easy-to-navigate version of your Website. Visitors won’t scroll through galleries of your previous landscape work if the image sizes are distorted on their screens, and they definitely won’t dig through your Website trying to find a phone number or contact form. Keep in mind that Google is penalizing Websites that are not optimized for mobile.
- It loads slowly. According to a KISSmetrics report, nearly 50% of consumers expect a Web page to load in under two seconds. Our attention spans are shortening. If you don’t want people to leave your site, be sure to optimize for load speed.
- It bombards users with pop-ups. Keep the reading experience as simple as possible. Be sure to use pop-ups in moderation and only use calls-to-action that delight (don’t guilt your site visitors into taking action).
- It features auto-playing video content. If someone is viewing your page in a quiet room and suddenly a video starts playing at full volume, chances are they’ll leave your page faster than they arrived. Let your visitors decide whether or not to play video content.
- It’s missing the most basic information. Nothing frustrates a Website visitor more than wanting to call a business but not being able to find a simple phone number. Make it as easy as possible for your Website visitors to find your contact information and get in touch with you.
There are endless articles available detailing the features you should add to your Website, but avoiding the pitfalls listed above could be even more important. Poor user experience can lead to low conversion rates, low rankings on Google and high page abandonment rates.
