Are elements on the page distracting from your conversion goal?
8 things that distract site visitors
- Auto-playing videos or audio. Don’t make your site visitor’s first action to mute or worse still hit the back arrow. Let them be in control of what plays and when.
- Pop-ups done wrong – timing is everything so don’t schedule them to load after 5 seconds. Give your visitors some time to get to know you before you try to kiss them. And do testing to ascertain how they are working and then fine-tune.
- Slow loading pages – people are very quick to give up on sites that take longer than expected to load. Use testing to understand why your pages are slow.
- Animations – a trend in modern websites is to display a sequence of very large images with text that sweeps in and fades out which often simply looks like showing off. If you have to do it be thoughtful and make sure it’s consistent with your goal pathway.
- Headlines that don’t match content – don’t mislead and disappoint your visitors with empty promises or deliver something they didn’t really want.
- The obvious use of stock images. Everyone understands that not all images on a site are originals. Be careful not to overuse ones that are likely to be popular. Be particularly careful with images of people who obviously don’t work for your company. Get real ones and put names on them as this helps with trust as well.
- Advertising – you are running a business of your own so why have ads for other companies on your site? You may have an affiliate relationship with some advertisers or perhaps your income is generated via advertising but make sure it is well balanced with your core content.
- Sponsored content – Avoid over-selling the benefits of other companies products in the guise of editorial content. This comes across as too-salesy especially for products not related to your own business.
