Top Reasons Why Visitors Leave Your Website

1. Slow Loading Web Pages

Customers do not like waiting, whether in line at the stores or in front of a slow-loading website.

According to Google, the probability that a visitor will leave your website increases by 32% as the load time of the web page goes from one second to three seconds.

A slow-loading website is one of the easiest ways for brands to make a bad first impression on their customers. The visitors equate slow responsiveness to inefficiency, and they will not buy anything, abandon their carts, or leave the site altogether, no matter how exclusive your products are.

The Solution?
Optimise your overall website’s page speed! Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTMetrix to determine the issues causing your website’s high load time. Rectifying these page speed issues results in better load time. Ideally, your website should load in 3 seconds. Furthermore, you can use Google Console and SEMrush to identify multiple redirect issues. Resolving those issues can significantly improve your page speed.

A website must look elegant and work smoothly, which is why page load speeds must be on top of your to-do list if you do not want visitors to leave your website.

2. Unresponsive Web Design for Mobile Devices

With 63% of consumers using mobile devices to find brands and products, if you do not pay attention to mobile responsiveness, you will lose a significant amount of organic traffic that comes to your website.

A non-responsive website on a mobile device is a deal-breaker. These types of visitors like to browse on the go and are most likely to abandon a transaction if a poorly optimised mobile experience comes in the way of their buying journey.

The Solution?
Brands should invest in mobile-first designs for their websites, keeping in mind touch-based interactions, the right size and appearance of text and images, and menus and buttons that are simple to navigate and easy to tap on to.

A responsive design of websites should be a priority for brands to ensure that the visitors do not leave due to poor performance and bad user experience. Mobile-friendly web analysis tools help designers create a website that functions well on all screen sizes and keeps things user-friendly and intuitive.

3. Lack Of Personality

Online consumers, nowadays, are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that unapologetically shows its personality.

However, those websites that lack personality, or, in other words, are generic and unmemorable, are the least likely to engage a visitor. These sites look plain and boring and have content that feels like anyone could have written it.

This lack of connection affects new and returning visitors, who consider monotonous and dull brand personality to be ‘just another website’ in a crowded and competitive market.

The Solution?
If you want to add personality to your website, you have to take care of three things; a distinct brand voice, tailored messaging, and cohesive marketing and branding strategies. Do you have a down-to-earth team behind the brand? Tell that to the world. Want to attract romantics with your products and services? Go for it! Is your brand outdoorsy and rugged? Prove that you are a force to be reckoned with.

Incorporate as much storytelling as you can into your visual and written content to create a connection with your audience. At the same time, make sure that the website is well-optimised so that the visitors keep coming back for more.

4. Cluttered Navigation and Overwhelming Layouts

An unclear navigation structure is bad for user experience. Imagine how frustrating it is for a visitor to arrive on a website only to be met with inconsistently placed navigation buttons, unequal visual weight of navigation elements, overwhelming menus, and a lack of clear labels.

Just like we value minimalism in an upscale market, minimalist navigation is also something that the visitors will highly appreciate. Furthermore, your site’s cluttered navigation not only frustrates the users but also crawlbots that are unable to list your pages in the search engine results.

The Solution?
The best way to avoid cluttered navigation or overwhelming layouts on a website is to understand the user’s navigation patterns.

You will get bonus marks if you reduce excessive pop-ups, irrelevant visuals, and overwhelming layouts on your website. Think of your website as a digital equivalent of a store. How would the customer browse the store, and where would they expect to find the information they require?

With this information in mind, highlight the most important content on your website with clean lines or white spaces, then make sure that the product categories, contact information, or other menus are categorised properly and are easily accessible.

5. Generic Website Copy

Almost all online consumers these days prefer exclusive content and powerful storytelling elements on a website. So, one of the reasons why they turn away from a website is a lack of engaging and persuasive copy.

Generally speaking, generic or error-ridden text can damage the credibility of any business, which is why brands must be extremely cautious that the content on their website conveys the exclusivity of their products and services.

Similarly, SEO attracts search engine users and brings them to the website with the promise that they will get answers to their desired keywords and queries. However, when the user arrives on a website only to find low-quality content and wrong or misleading keywords and phrases, they hit the back button in an instant.

The Solution?
Generic content on a website is a rare occurrence. But even if you are not one of the careful website owners and are pumping out mediocre content, here are some steps you can take to retain the customers on your site.

Consider their perspective. Why would your brand appeal to your customers? Guide and direct them with your words, but try to keep it brief and crisp. Website visitors are short of time, which means that you need to deliver a persuasive copy that engages the visitor before they get bored and click away!

Avoid dense paragraphs and unstructured content, which makes a website feel uninviting and overwhelming. Copywriters who are experienced in branding in your niche know how to break content on a website into key points, callouts, and micro-copies so that the site becomes more skimmable and attractive to read.

Write as much valuable content as you can, and build a strong structure of internal links that would not only boost SEO performance but also enhance user navigation.

6. Intrusive Ads And Pop-Ups

If your website is running on an ad-driven model, you are not cutting it. Do you know that approximately 912 million people around the world are using ad blockers? This is done to avoid poor user experience on a website.

While removing ads altogether from a website might not appeal to many brands, they will be surprised to hear that many consumers value billboards, magazine ads, infomercials, and other traditional forms of advertising more than banner ads that appear online.

Furthermore, unwanted or pop-up ads also contribute to bounce rates, as these ads are highly inconvenient and distractive and affect the user experience on a website.

The Solution?
Having ads on a website doesn’t mean they have to appear at every location. Visitors should see your website’s content more than the ads. Keep the user experience uncluttered by limiting the ad placement.

Also, the pop-ups should appear strategically. That is, they shouldn’t be poorly timed. The pop-up ads must also be easy to close, should look mobile-friendly, and in no way affect the browsing experience of the visitors.

7. Auto-Playing Sounds

Auto-playing sounds can fall into a grey area when it comes to accessibility and user experience.

Young consumers, in particular, are quite tech-savvy these days. They carefully consider how they want to consume online content.

While auto-playing videos look visually appealing and impart aesthetics to a website, audio that plays against their consent can be jarring. Especially when they are browsing a website in a professional environment, which leads them to exit the site at once.

Thoughtful sounds that complement a user’s experience, such as alerts and notifications or logging in and out sounds, can be used sparingly, but audio or music that starts playing automatically without users’ permission is one of the reasons why they will probably never return to your website.

The Solution?
Web developers can set the audio or video content to play only when visitors allow it. If the videos are set to auto-play, muting the audio and providing captions and transcripts instead can be a great alternative. Also, it can be good for SEO.

If you allow users to control playback options on your website, they will feel in charge of their browsing experience, which is also a great way to retain visitors.

8. Your Search Feature Is Ineffective

Search features are extremely important for websites that have many elements, such as resource centres, an extensive blog, product catalogues, etc.

No matter how perfect a website’s navigation is, if it has a useless search feature or doesn’t have one, it might drive visitors away. Why? Because some users are in a hurry to find what they are looking for. They will not spend time learning about the navigation or hierarchy on your website.

This is why not including a search box on your website can exclude those users, who will inevitably land straight into competitors’ hands.

The Solution?
Add an optimised search box to your website. A search feature neither disrupts a website’s usability nor steals away its aesthetic appeal.

However, it will use tags and categories to deliver precise results or enhance the user experience with partial matching results. You can also use tools like SearchWP for WordPress or Searchspring for Shopify to keep users engaged on your website.

9. Technical Errors And Insecure Website

When a website throws error warnings, broken links, and 404 pages, it makes visitors think that the site is not credible or secure. Website visitors, especially consumers making expensive purchases, are most of the time wary that no online platform should access their personal or financial data, which is why such errors on a website can lead to the loss of potential clients because they will question your brand’s professionalism.

The Solution?
HTTPS encryption protects a website from attacks such as man-in-the-middle or eavesdropping. Furthermore, the encryption secures the confidential data of the user, such as social security numbers, credit card details, or other sensitive data.

Websites can display trust badges (e.g., SSL certificates) or privacy assurances to establish credibility. SSL certificates, reliable content details, testimonials and privacy policies are also great ways to maintain a website’s reputation of being trustworthy and reliable.

10. High Cognitive Load

In terms of UX, cognitive load matters a lot. ‘Cognitive load’ is the time and effort it takes for the visitors to make a decision on your website. It is all about how the website’s interface design affects the mental effort of a user.

If a website is cluttered and confusing, it will make the visitors think too hard. They will not find the information easily, navigate your website, and find it difficult to make purchasing decisions. As a result, the cognitive strain makes the users frustrated, and after that, they’re most likely to leave.

The Solution?
A user-friendly structure and navigation of a website is the most efficient formula to decrease cognitive load. Brief information about the business, a logical menu, uniform design and layout, emotion-evoking content, clear labels, and intuitive design lower the chance that a visitor will balk at making a decision on your website.

11. Low-Quality Or Jarring Visuals

A website should avoid harsh colour schemes and low content scannability at all costs. A boring design and layout are one thing because a bland and uninspired design can only fail to differentiate your brand from your competitors.

However, harsh aesthetics or low-quality visuals have even more negative effects on user experience. Overuse of dynamic elements, disorganised layouts, and poor-quality images are extremely unpleasant to look at. They make it very difficult for users to traverse the website and, eventually, drive them away.

The Solution?
Web designers must start with a clean and organised basic design, keeping straightforward navigation at the forefront of their minds. After that, they should build up visually appealing aspects of the website, such as sophisticated colour palettes, elegant typography (do not use Comic Sans!), and high-resolution images (ensuring that they also load fast).

These elements create a cognitive harmony for visitors. All brands should invest in custom photographs and videography to ensure that the visual content on the website aligns with their brand identity and is of the highest standards.