[Viral Now] 7 Common Issues That Hinder an Online User Experience

Having a website in the modern age can be rewarding as long as it is operated in the right way. Any website that doesn’t conform could find itself gathering virtual dust within the online sphere.

It is believed that mobile-connected devices will account for 68 percent of all Internet traffic by 2017. While these kinds of numbers can be exciting for webmasters, websites that fail to offer the best possible user experience online will often fall by the wayside.

In order to ensure the best possible user experience and a seamless conversion process, ensure that your site isn’t making these 7 user experience mistakes.

1. Lack of Social Sign-Up and Logins

The filling in of registration forms is something that many try to avoid online, simply because the task can be monotonous at best. However, as social networking continues to gain more traction in the online world, so do the features it offers.

Having the option to log in or sign up via a social network ensures that you provide a seamless experience for users to get started and view the content, which eventually, can lead to an increase in subscribers and customers.

Solution: If running a community or a subscription based website, ensure to implement social sign-ups and log-ins that don’t require users to fill in a lengthy contact form, and avoids email verifications.

2. Poor Navigation and Hidden Pages

The lack of clean and simple navigation can quickly ruin the experience that users have with the site. Usually, visitors wouldn’t be willing to make more than 3-4 clicks to get to the desired page.

Unless the website is over 10,000 pages, webmasters & designers need to ensure that all pages are properly structured and categorised under relevant “parent” pages.

Solution: Use a clear menu structure with top-level pages and sub-pages. Categorise the pages that you wish users to navigate to in a proper manner. As an example, list your services pages under the main “Services” or “What we Offer” page.

3. Not optimised for mobile

Although the Internet has evolved, that doesn’t mean that every website adapts to a mobile & tablet screens. According to Marketing Land, mobile traffic accounts for more than 50% of all the traffic. Those who have not updated their website will find that their users have less-than-stellar experience when navigating the site, often having to pinch in and out screen, zoom in and out, and use awkward button placements to find their way around the website.

Mobile users who are not able to navigate a site that is not responsive will often look elsewhere, which can be detrimental to your sales turnover.

Solution: Ensure to invest into a mobile and tablet versions of the site. If using WordPress, this just comes down to choosing the right responsive theme that will automatically adjust to the screen size.

4. Excessive Pop-ups

Although the vast majority of people have developed an immunity against pop-ups, some of us still feel frustrated when there is an excessive number of pop-ups asking to sign-up for the email updates with a tiny grey text saying “No, I don’t want to”.

Yes, pop-ups are an effective way to increase your email database and encourage social sharing, as long as this strategy is not overused to the point when people get frustrated and annoyed with the site.

Solution:

• Don’t place multiple pop-ups on a single web page.
• Make sure that your pop-ups are relevant. For example, you wouldn’t want to show an email sign-up to a person who has already signed up.
• Ensure that those pop-ups are easy to close.

5. Complicated Contact Forms

Almost every website uses contact forms, whether it’s as simple “contact us” or a transactional form. One of the most common issues that sites make is to do with lengthy forms & unnecessary fields. Far too often, websites add irrelevant fields when trying to get as much information as possible in one go. Who would want to fill in a 10-minute contact form just to get in touch? Yes, no one, especially if you are on a mobile.

Solution: Keep the form fields to a minimum, and only ask for the relevant information. What would people think when your site is asking for their address just to receive a quote? Yes, that you would probably post a bunch of annoying leaflets.

6. Poorly Written Content

Poorly written content has been a bugbear of the online world in the past. During the early days of the Internet, it wasn’t unusual to enter a search term and be greeted with a series of online sites that offered nothing but a series of ads.

In a bid to contend with the poorly-written content, Google introduced a number of algorithm updates that looked to ensure that any content being presented to an online audience was informative and relevant.

As such, websites had to ensure that content matched that of the keywords being searched. If it didn’t, it would simply fall down the results page. As such, it’s now more important than ever to ensure that any content being produced for your website is written professionally as well as being informative.

Solution: Ensure that your provide a regular stream of top notch quality content that is targeted to provide accurate and useful information to the user.

7. Online Users Who Are Kept Waiting

While it’s not always the fault of the webmaster, any servers that struggle with the downloading of information will often affect the user experience, normally meaning that they will abort the action they were trying to perform, which could be an all-important sign-up, or a potential customer.

Furthermore, users would not normally wait for more than 4 seconds for the site to load. Hence, if your site speed is greater than 4 seconds, users are very likely to leave the site.

Solution:

• Choose a good hosting provider
• Implement a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
• Minify and Combine CSS & Javascript files
• Install a good caching plugin
• Optimise, compress and scale your images
• Minimise DNS lookups

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Source: Lifehack.org