With such fierce competition around for any business owner, there is no getting away from the fact that having a website that has been properly designed is an important factor to ensuring visitors remain on your site and do not abandon for your competition. If you are scratching your head as to why people are leaving your website, here are five reasons why that is probably happening.
This is a major reason why people leave a website. We live in a world where people are expecting things to happen instantly or at least very quickly, so on that basis, would you expect someone to wait around for a slow site to load?
Cutting just a few seconds from the load time of your website can make a big difference in reducing abandonment. A simple solution you can make to improve a slow website would be to reduce image sizes down to an optimal size and then to compress them using FREE online tools such as tinypng.com. Images tend to be the biggest part of a website's load so reducing their size as much as possible will speed up your site, go one step further and run your site through a CDN (content delivery network) and you will see further performance improvements. A CDN refers to a geographically distributed bunch of servers that work together to serve up content quickly and efficiently. It allows for the quick transfer of assets needed to make a functioning website. HTML files, JavaScript files, CSS, images and videos can all be served up through a CDN.
Ralf Speth, CEO of Jaguar Land Rover once said: "If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design".
There are a huge number of websites out there that are so badly designed it is damaging to the companies credentials as a professional outfit. Sometimes the websites are that bad, they are better off not having one in the first place. The damage a poorly designed website or online presence should not be underestimated. It is easier to start with a properly designed website rather than turn a bad online presence into a good one. A well-designed website goes a lot further than just looking nice, it needs to be easy to navigate, easy to read the content, perform well and professionally reflect your brand. Besides, a user will more than likely click back if they find your website looks out of date or amateurish. Careful consideration needs to be made when selecting colours, textures, layout, imagery and typography.
You have nailed your new website, it looks amazing, loads quickly, call to actions are in the relevant places and works as it should across all devices and browsers. You are finding though that results are not as they should be. This may be down to your site not appealing to your target audience. It is critical that you identify who your audience is and designing your site around them. What device do they tend to use to view your site? What is their age range? Making sure the style, language and appropriate images are used can affect how appealing your site is to your customers. If you have designed a site that alienates your users then you may need to consider redesigning your site to suit.
You have developed and designed a fantastic looking website, you have the call to actions in the right areas, the website works smoothly across all devices, but you still do not have great results. A major factor could be that the content and imagery is not relatable to your target audience. It is critical to understand and identify who your audience is, what device are using? What times do they visit most? What are areas in the world are they from? By knowing these factors and more it helps us dictate the content and imagery that we use and even the flow of the pages. It sounds simple but so often it can be overlooked and can be a big factor in why audiences leave your site without purchasing or leaving an enquiry.
It is important to consider the points raised above when looking for a new website to be built. Whether you require a new site or are looking to improve what you currently have, then considering these factors will help reduce the risk of people abandoning your site.
If you would like to discuss how we can improve your current online presence, why not send us an enquiry for a FREE, no-obligation quote?
Article Written by Alex Simpson
Designer & Digital Marketing Specialist
alex@madebyabstraction.com
