Ways to Lose a New Visitor
Bringing traffic to your new site is hard enough, so when you finally start receiving a steady stream of unique visits per day, the last thing you want to do is turn them off. Here are a few tips to keep in mind while organizing and preparing content for your site.
1. Navigation and Slow Loading Pages – One of the quickest ways to turn off a new visitor is to create a complicated website. If a new visitor has a hard time finding what they are looking for they are more likely to get frustrated and leave. Equally frustrating are slow loading pages. People want information now and fast, having a page that takes 3 min to load.
2. Targeted Audience – Creating a site that is not targeted to your core audience will also turn off a new visitor. For example, if you are selling acne skin care products, you will want a friendly site that looks professional, authoritative and respectable. Creating an acne skin care site with affiliate ads, cartoons and music potentially can turn off a potential customer and you might not be taken seriously.
3. Contact Information – When visitors to your website have a question they want to be able to find your contact information easily. Whether it’s a contact form, phone number or email address it needs to be prominently displayed from your homepage.
4. Grammatical Errors – Depending on the type of visitors you wish to attract well written content is very important. Your typographical errors on the site will be noticed by your visitors in no time and they almost always are considered unprofessional and careless.
5. Hidden Pricing – New customers want to have all the necessary information before they make a purchase. Not making sure your prices are available and upfront will cause your visitors to give up and leave your website. In addition, it gives the appearance that you are being sneaky or have something to hide.
6. Customer Service and Follow Up – You can set your business apart from the rest by continually offering fast, friendly and valuable information to your customers. Responding to emails and phone calls within a reasonable amount of time means a lot to the people that visit your site. When a customer asks a question or leaves a comment on your blog that requires a response
7. Adding Fresh Content - Not adding fresh content for several months will drive away many visitors and search engine placement can be affected.
8. Out of Date Products and Services and Dead Links – Visitors will stop coming if you do not have up to date items on your website or reference techniques, products or services that are no longer in use. This is especially important if your website topic is in the field of technology. Hyperlinks that say “Page Not Found” or the link on the website goes nowhere will affect spider crawling and visitor experience.
9. Professional Conduct – In the business world it’s important that you’re professional, especially when dealing with difficult clients. It’s imperative to be kind, courteous and take care of business. Refrain from any type of name calling or blame placing. Stand up for your business in a professional manner and treat your customers with respect at all times. Remember the old adage — the customer is always right.
10. Payment Options/Security - Customers want to know that they can trust you with their financial information. Choose a payment provider that offers a secure way to transit orders and credit card information. If possible, offer more than one payment option to give your customers the ability to choose how they will pay.
Creating a website that is customer-friendly isn’t as simple as one might think. There are many aspects to consider and the designer must choose carefully or risk losing sales. Avoid these ten no-no’s and make your website into a successful business venture.
