10 things users hate on websites

Published By zooboole

As I usually say it, having or managing a website is never an easy task. It's a permanent duty that requires a lot of skills in coding, marketing, communication, or probably some social sciences, etc because one of the main aims of a website is to attract and please most of its users.

In this post, I will be talking about a few things you must avoid on your websites in order to increase the interest of your users. Note that I based my research on a very famous topic from inbound, which I have been following since last month. In that discussion, many people tried to express what exactly pushes them to leave a website instantly.

It's usually said that content is king.

What is a (good) content?

Good content is that information which reaches an intended audience and impacts it as planned. It might be conveyed through any type of medium, the principle remains the same as it's fully part of human communication.

The key parts in this definition are message type, medium and the audience. In order to have a message which is considered as good, those three elements must be well synchronized, which means that depending on the audience you have to choose an adequate medium and a specific message to both.

In our context, we deal with websites, which can use almost all types of media to convey a message. Here too we face the vast and diversified audience with different levels and experiences. That makes it harder to define an appropriate message. but, content on our websites is represented by articles, static pages, generated content, images, videos, etc. Except that, in this case, the environment of the content can also influence its value, or even contribute to its definition. Some of these elements are the website's design, content type(Text, video, or image), content police(Text size, spaces, line heights), colors, etc. All this gathered with the user's experience and his backgrounds can make it very hard to sharpen a message which can be considered as perfect or good.

Also, individually, people can have different moods from time to time. Brief the entire human feeling impact a lot how a message does. And when it comes to people's level, this might be intellectual, psychological, social, literature, science, etc, how far everyone has been in his life can also influence his decision in accepting or not a message. For example, if you are a specialist in communication or in writing, you will probably consider this article as a low level, because I know few in those fields. Or already the English level can be unacceptable to a native English speaker.

My idea here is that making good content on a website requires many elements which must come together to determine the quality of content. And if you fail to make one of these elements right, that may impact the whole message, and that in different manners.

Following is a list of some things users would not appreciate on your website. Having them can negatively impact your content/website image.

1. Popups

Popups are these messages, boxes, texts, images, etc, bouncing up here and there when you visit a website. That can really be annoying for your users. Many websites implement such things to force people to take some actions such as: providing their emails, signing up, liking/following them on social media. This may look like it works, but like I said above, users life experience are not the same. Some people see those popups like something nice, and others who really know what is made for will definitely hate it and therefore hate your website.

For those who do direct ads, they usually design those flashy, or animated images which are playing all the time. It disturbs your users' focus.

2. Images, banners, or slider without any specific reason of being

Sometimes people over-do on their design to the extent that they display images at some parts of their website without it bringing any information to the user.

3. Auto-play videos, music, live radios, etc.

It's usually implemented by big news websites like, Bloomberg, CNN, BBC. Sometimes it starts playing and you don't even know from which tab it plays. If you are lucky and you are using Google Chrome you can see a tab with the volume sign. In that case, you rush to close it and never go back there again.

I particularly hate it. You know videos, music, live radios are something which consumes a lot of data. You might be in a country where that doesn't matter a lot. But there are billions of people around this globe who cannot afford to buy much data.

Aside from data consumption, these media can be annoying when they start playing without the user's consent. Depending on the situation they might not want any noise. Imagine they are opening your website to show something during a meeting or a conference, then a video or a music starts playing some tracks they may not even like.

4. Too much boasting off

I really get surprised sometimes what people think of when they design a website that is there to promise you the earth and heaven while those thing, everybody knows, are impossible to do. People design their website based on a canvas of design even if their content doesn't match it. They will just play with words and images with the idea of deceiving the visitor.

Users are not animals, they are a human being like you. Offer them what you have in a simple way and they will understand you.

Besides, when you decide to follow such habits, you'll lack words. Everything about your website will be inventions.

And we have a lot of such types of websites here in Africa. Because people want to make some money with Adsense, they will be sharing to existing title, and picture in order to make people click, once on the website you will not see any information related to what you read.

5. Lack of call-to-actions

Call-to-actions are very important to direct users on what to do next or which path to take. This can be very exceptional for new visitors because they are not yet familiar with your platform.

This may also be on your feedbacks. For example, when a user tries to access a service only logged-in members have access, you need to give them a feedback on that and give them actions to take.

6. Meaningless headlines

Try your best to let your visitors understand what they are about to read already from your headlines. When a user knows what he's going to see and still clicks, it a sign of you winning a visitor for good. Do not make deceiving headlines just to call clicks. Probably they will click, but they will also bounce back automatically.

7. Awful design

Many websites also over-do in their designs mixing wrong colors and abusing of background colors.

This is usually a lack of good design concepts. Remember what you may think is good can easily look bad to others. You need to keep your design simple and light, create an intuitive navigation, etc.

You can read more about this here.

8. Slow website

When your website takes about 10 to 20 seconds to load, be assured your visitors will not have such time to wait. You need to [optimize](google speed checker) your CSS, images, etc in order to improve its speed.

9. Too much ads around the content

This is a very surprising thing; sometimes you visit a website and all around the content you have only ads as if it's for sale. It seems like "if you really want it you have to pay the price". Ads between every couple of slides.

10. Incomplete website

Nothing to say. If you have nothing to offer yet why would people stay?

Bottom line

It's all about how you serve your content to your users. The simpler it's the better for them to grab it without a problem, and the best it's for your website.

Add more spaces within your content sections in order to allow your users to know what is what. Never try to trick people for adverts or for visits. Take also care of making every single option operational. Don't leave options incomplete or buggy.

Another considerable thing you should consider is to make your website responsive. Many people today visit website from their mobile devices such as phones and tablets