Do you want your visitors to stay on your website for a while and read your posts thoroughly? I bet you do. That is why you should know these 10 mistakes that drives your visitors away in less than two minutes. Avoid them and your visitors will enjoy their stay and come back again in future. Making your visitors annoyed quickly is never a good idea for a blog / website, you know. Especially when it's growing.1. Using large or too many graphics: loads slow
Large and lots of graphics cost bandwidth and and make your site slow to load. If the load time is beyond your visitors' limit of acceptance, they will get impatience obviously. Thus resulting in their leaving at once, and that is not something you want. If a larger image is needed to describe your content, provide a link like "click here to view in larger size" or something. Therefore, the slow loading only occur when your visitor wish to see the larger image. Bigger size is not always better, dude.
2. Playing music automatically: irritating
Have you ever visited a website or blog that plays music automatically without your agreement? What do you feel? 9 of 10 people will get annoyed and quickly close the tab or window to silence it. If you have a plan to add sound effect or music to your site, don't do it, just don't. That's why they created Winamp, so that people can listen to music WHEN they want it. Don't force them to hear it from your site, that's bad.
3. Using bad formatting styles / template
Very simple: if your site is not friendly on the eyes, visitors will feel uncomfortable. It will drive them away fast, especially when the formats break into each other like crazy. Therefore, decide your format / template early and stick with it. There are a lot of free web templates out there that look tidy and good, don't say you can't afford them.
4. Using poor background color or image: text hard to read
Poor background color or image will make your text hard to read, and it is certainly annoying for your visitors. They will leave in half a minute. Improve your site's readability to make your visitors comfortable to stay. Light background is good with dark texts, and vice verse. Your target visitors are not super-men with their super vision, are they?
6. Writing too long posts: boring
No one likes someone who talks too much, and it also applies in blogging. Most internet surfers are modern type of people, and in this modern day, people have lots of things to do. Therefore, if you think people will have the time to read long babbling posts, you are wrong. Always make your articles comprehensive and don't extend them over and over. Yes, cut the crap. Super-duper long post is only good if titled "How to Sleep Quickly: Read This Post".
7. Using elements that blink, bounce, or scroll: distracting
Unless your website or blog is for kids, it is a bad idea to have these elements. They will distract your visitors from your message, reducing your communication effectiveness. Whatever you do, always limit or remove distracting elements from your site. Less is more my friend, less is more.
8. Using poor opening on the posts: negative first impression
Some people tend to open their post lamely, and that is totally bad for visitors. For example, if you are going to write a post about computer technology, don't open it by telling what activity you did yesterday, which has nothing to do with the topic. Some bloggers really do this in their extra long posts, and their annoyed visitors will just say "What the f*&% ?!" and leave at once. Don't do it, unless you are someone really-really famous.
9. Putting excessive advertising
Few ads will make your website looks more professional, but putting too many of them will distract your visitors from your content. It also has a big chance to irritate your visitors and drive them away quickly. You won't get more money from ads if they are annoying for your visitors. Don't look like you desperately wanting money, it's not too good for your brand.
10. Putting a registration page
Trust me folks, it will not make the visitors register. Instead, it will drive them away instantly. Time on site and bounce rate will show it, if you use some traffic analytic. If you really really want to ask people to register to your website, you better offer them something worthy registering. Otherwise, those who have registered may curse you because they feel deceived.
I came across a blog of a girl talking about her pony horse once. And guess what, registration was needed to leave comments. That's just stupid. Never ever do it if you blog about a pony horse, unless you're the daughter of Barrack Obama.
What kind of annoyance do you hate the most from a website (based on your experience)? Let's share on the comment box.
