Tired of Google thinking you’re a robot? Or landing on a web page and facing a myriad of pop-ups?
When interacting with a website, a few features can provide a bad user experience. When misused, these features can negatively impact your brand reputation and overall feel for your business. Here are five examples of unpopular website features that may be deterring your users:
Pop-ups
Many people may think pop-ups are a great way to engage website visitors and force them to read content or sign up for their mailing list. However, this is often not the case, and usually causes frustration for the user. On mobile, the experience can become even more cumbersome as the pop-up obscures most of the website content, and the bounce rate can rise as a result. It may be a better approach to embed the popup content – whether that be a newsletter sign-up or a call to action – in a place where the user will expect to find it, and giving them the option of engaging with it naturally.
Long Cookie Notices
Cookie policies are now required by GDPR laws, and many websites will offer a prompt to accept or reject. However, when the process of rejecting all but essential cookies involves having to make a tedious trip through multiple clicks to switch cookie trackers on or off, things can get confusing and put mistrust in your website. Although it’s good to be offered a choice when users see this on every website they visit, they often just want to get rid of the prompt with a simple ‘accept’ or ‘reject’, so make it easy for them to make that decision in one click.
Live Chat Widgets
This is a divisive feature. It’s always beneficial to be able to engage with users of your website directly and answer any questions they may have. However, incorrectly implemented, this feature can leave chat boxes obscuring vital information on your web page. In addition to this, AI chatbots that provide generic auto-responses can leave users frustrated with the lack of real human interaction. If your website is large enough to have a real online instant message service, live chat widgets can be helpful for engagement when implemented properly.
Autoplaying Sounds
“Where’s that music coming from?!” How many times have you gone to a web page and music or a video has started playing? It can be even more annoying when you can’t find the source of the sound on the page! Not only is this irritating, but it’s a thumbs-down for accessibility and user experience as well. Having sound auto playing can deter users fast because the quickest way to stop the music is to close your website.
Too Much Animation
With the trend of slick web animations over the last couple of years, movement within websites can be a great asset to a website experience. When used too much, however, they can become dizzying, distracting and overwhelming to the user, not to mention they can often increase loading times and perform poorly on mobile devices. Choosing style over substance can hurt the user experience, so it’s best to use animation subtly and smartly. It’s always best to do your consumer research and know your target audience to evaluate their needs and expectations.
Wrap Up: Know Your Audience
It’s really important to know your target audience and put yourself in their shoes when designing and developing a website. Don’t distract them with hard-to-find content or pop-ups that don’t go away – and always make sure that your content is accessible to all of your potential customers!
