Your website is the face of your business online. No matter what industry your company is a member of, having a website that effectively conveys your company’s message, attracts visitors, gains leads and attains sales is critical to success. The internet and website best practices are constantly in flux. Keeping your website up to date with best practices can be the difference between a bounced visitor and a sale. Does your website include these now outdated elements? Find out why these are now outdated and what you should do instead here!
Irrelevant Elements: A crowded and cluttered website can take away from the message of your website and degrade the user experience. Although the elements may be designed very well on your page, having too many of these “blinking lights” on one page can distract the user and likely cause them to leave your page. Your website should focus on your message and convey that you are an expert in your field. Remember the old saying, less is more.
Flash Intros: A flash intro is an animated short that pops up when website visitors visit your URL. Users are forced to sit through the intro to reach the website. These are no longer effective and are likely driving away more traffic than you can imagine. Website users dislike forced information and tend to leave when a flash intro pops up. Not only does it diminish user experience, but it not effective for your website’s SEO strategy. Search engines have issues crawling flash intros and therefore cannot effectively analyze them. Instead of forcing information onto your user, put this information into a Call-to-Action on your website and improve your user experience.
Automated Popups: Popup ads and videos distract the user from the main focus of your website. Website users are likely to close the popup immediately and may potentially leave your website quickly. Videos and offers have a place on your website, but not as a popup. Add video into your website or create CTAs that will lead the user to the information if they desire it.
Use of Meta Keywords: At one point meta keywords may have helped your search engine ranking, but this is not the case today. If anything, your competition may be using these keywords to discover what you are ranking for.It is more important to have quality meta descriptions on your website because they influence your organic click- through – rate in search engines. Keywords can be used in places such as title tags, URLs, headline tags and of course in your content where appropriate (no keyword stuffing!).
Non-Responsive Website: Many website visits are now coming from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. If your website is not mobile-friendly and providing a great user experience, you likely have a higher bounce rate on mobile devices. It is likely that this increase will continue and updating your website to be responsive should be a high priority for your website.
Eliminating these features from your website can drastically decrease your bounce rate and eventually lead to more sales. Still have more questions about your website and how you can improve your user experience? Contact Paveya’s expert web design team for more assistance!
