As a webmaster, it is our responsibility to ensure visitors have the most pleasant time navigating through our website and the same goes for any webmaster out there. Most often than not, webmasters overlook the common things and not realize the true problems with their websites. The problems I am speaking of can be evident to eye, while in other cases, it may not and take a form with the webmaster not even knowing about the problem existing. And here, I’ll be addressing these common problems webmasters fail to address that may simply irritate visitors into leaving. All it takes really is a bit of puzzle solving and communication to tweak your websites to be as convenient to visitors as possible.
1. Save information on forms
For websites that require a user to submit information through a form, tons of things can go wrong. Nothing causes a visitor to be more irritated than filling out a page worth of forms and then the page refreshes, or the user accidentally clicks something and none of the information they spent filling is there when they press the back button. Unless the visitor is one heck of a persistent person and would like to try again, most visitors after this scenario would most likely leave and hope to never cross this problem again. I have been in that position countless times and all I can say is that it is truly irritating and a common problem webmasters don’t realize.
2. Keep a balance
Advertisements
Money can be a problem with most webmasters, but there should generally be a balance between sponsoring advertisers to providing solid content for your readers to enjoy, because that is what got them to be readers in the first place right? Once you lose the trust of reader, that is when you should start thinking because without the visitors, there is no advertisers. While sponsored posts can be interesting, there should always be a balance. And really, no matter how interesting a sponsored post may be, visitors will be irritated if you continuously write only posts that advertisers pay you to write. It is simply dull and plain old boring.
3. Enlarged pictures
A common mistake a webmasters make is use a photo without giving readers an option to enlarge the photo. There has been countless times where I’ve encountered a photo that would embed some sort text within the photo itself, but unfortunately, it is unreadable due to the resolution and the fact that the photo has been resized. As tiny as this may be, it can be quite irritating, especially if your website relies heavily upon photos.
4. Option to unsubscribe
Subscription based emails and feeds are big things these days. About every website adapted these methods and are now used almost in every type of website no matter what kind of it is. And some problems I’ve encountered as a reader for some websites is that there seems to be no “real working” unsubscribe button. While I like to be kept in the loop with notifications every now and then, it can be rather irritating if they begin to send countless emails everyday. But what is even more irritating is finding out that the unsubscribe button takes 7 days before you are off their list. And eventually, two weeks later, you find that you are subscribed to other things and are probably on countless email lists already – rendering your email stuck in a vicious cycle. Fortunately, feed based subscriptions lends readers more control, thus is why I heavily recommend visitors to use feeds for receiving their favorite content.
5. Keep block ads at a balance
While being a publisher, it can be an exciting experience to see advertisers wanting to advertise on your page, essentially. However, be warily that for visitors, it can be looked upon as negative thing so it is always wise to keep a balance. More advertisements doesn’t essentially mean more revenue if you are dealing with the most common publisher program, Google Adsense. Positioning is all that matters to be getting more clicks in Adsense, really. Also, pop ups are generally a big no-no for most readers and can often do more harm than good.
6. Keep your cool
Now, you are probably asking what I mean by “keep your cool.” What I mean is that if you are a certain creative, outgoing webmaster that often has a unique way of doing things that keeps your visitors enticed, and you do something out of pocket for something you would normally not do, – like for example, not recommend something and then recommend it due to possibly paid incentives – nothing can irritate visitors more than losing your credibility in front of your readers.
7. Faster page speed
Nowadays, there are tons of free open source applications out there that can help improve the overall loading speed of your pages that it would be foolish to not take advantage of these resources. If you operate a WordPress type blog, read into my 22 Ways to Optimize WordPress to Load Even Faster.
8. Not bias
A big one that can irritate visitors is being bias towards one side of an argument. When we think of being bias, we often think of big controversial debate topics, however, being bias takes many forms. For a blog owner, their position and bias towards one side can be seen through how they selectively approve comments, contributions, and their insight through careful evaluation of their practices. Most often than not, this practice of selective picking can silence an opposing party and can lose all credibility for readers on the opposing side of the author.
9. Thorough proofreading
Nothing can show your readers that you can careless or is lackluster than not proofreading for minor grammatical errors and checking for spelling errors. Now, almost all major site platform has adapted spell checking so be sure to use it to your advantage because it was made for this exact purpose.
10. Easy to navigate
Having a website that is easy to navigate and easy to find things that visitors want, can go a long way in pleasing visitors into becoming loyal readers. And not to mention, give them more time to browse through the content your website has to offer. One big mistake I see is present in a lot of websites is that they do not adapt a easy to navigate menu system, which of course isn’t healthy and can be problematic. At very least, I’d say all webmasters should have is a search bar where users can easily search for content. It can readers tremendous amounts of time finding the content they want, compared to looking for the content they want through messy categories.
