15 Ways To Screw Up Website Usability

Sometimes it’s about what you don’t do as much as it is what you do. This can ring particularly true when it comes to website usability. There are lots of problems that can send visitors screaming into cyberspace to escape your poorly designed website. Let‘s see whether some of these common website usability issues sound familiar to you…

1. No clear objective – What’s your website about? You have about 5-10 seconds to share what your website is about before visitors leave.
2. Not making the content scannable – We read in chunks, and if visitors can’t scan your webpage and get the gist of it in a few seconds, they will go away!
3. Not being mobile friendly – According to Google over half of all web traffic now comes from mobile devices.
4. Not using videos on your site – Include video on your website, but whatever you do, avoid using the autoplay feature!
5. No updated, quality content – If your blog posts and articles are old and outdated, it’s it’s no surprise that your visitors are fleeing.
6. Hard-to-find contact information – Don’t hide from your visitors, make sure they can contact you easily if they want to.
7. Not collecting emails or offering newsletters – If you are not collecting email addresses and offering newsletters you are missing out on sales opportunities!
8. Not utilizing title and description Meta tags on your website – Proper use can help your site get indexed and ranked in the search engines.
9. No social sharing buttons – Social media and social signals affect search engine rankings and help with website usability. Add some buttons to share your content!
10. Missing calls-to-action – You want an action from your visitors such as a phone call or a purchase right? Then ask for it!
11. Poor site navigation – Stay away from confusing menus, use breadcrumbs, and make sure that all pages include navigation back to your home page.
12. Not optimizing images – Make sure you compress images and use the ALT and TITLE attributes for any images used in your posts.
13. Overuse of Flash – It may look cool but it slows website load times, causes usability issues and be can very irritating to your visitors.
14. No way to measure your progress –Are you using web analytics such as Google Analytics for measuring sales and conversions? If not, you’re flying blind.
15. “Intro” pages – These are artifacts of an former age, your home page should be the first thing your visitors see!