The most common reasons why people leave websites

By the latest count, there are currently over 400 million active websites. Among them, there are those that are engaging, intuitive, and overall interesting. But, there are also those that leave readers bored, frustrated and that quickly inspire them to leave. In order to attract and keep a decent online audience, your goal should definitely be to create the one that is closer to the first group. And to make that happen, you need to be aware of the common reasons why people leave websites. ConvertMore is here to guide you toward achieving that goal.

6 common reasons why people leave websites

Before we list the reasons why visitors don’t stay on a website, it is important to note that these particular reasons have nothing to do with the type of website or business. Whether your website is about selling food, clothing, nuclear physics, or selling cars, these reasons remain true and steadfast. And, the neat thing about them is that they have remained pretty much the same for well over 20 years. So, if you can’t seem to keep visitors on your website, know that you are probably making one of the following mistakes. And it’s important to identify and correct those mistakes if you want to grow your website sales.

Outdated design choices

Take your average person who has no prior web design experience, and let them create a website. What you’ll probably see are comic sans, background music, and popup help boxes. All in all, outdated design choices. Modern, successful, websites are sleek, professionally designed, and carefully catered for target audiences. Therefore, it can be surprisingly easy and it is surprisingly common for people to create an outdated website that feels irrelevant, unimaginative, and overall not worth checking out. Such websites inspire visitors to leave at first glance.

Unintuitive design

One of the main reasons why you need to have a professional design your website is intuitiveness. Know that once a person visits a website they expect you to guide their attention. Every page and post of your website should have a natural flow to it. This is mainly done through careful design, proper button placement, and clever internal linking. When handled properly, it gives your readers a feel of ease and comfort while keeping their attention. Lose that and you risk losing a significant number of site visitors.

Poor content

While this may seem redundant, you’d be surprised to learn that a large portion of website owners care little about their content. They put all of the emphasis on quantity and just want to have as many posts as quickly as possible. This, in the modern era of high information accessibility, is a bad idea. To keep visitors on your website you need to ensure that you have quality content. Be it written, drawn, or recorded, your content needs to uphold high standards. Know that for every website out there, there are probably dozens that are similar. So, if you are to keep readers on your website, you need to offer them a reason to stay.

Ads and popups

While having ads on a website is one of the easiest ways to monetize your online presence, it is also the easiest way to lose visitors. Ads are everywhere. Whether it is to check a quick video, go through the Instagram feed, or read the news on Facebook – they are always present. Therefore, if you choose to incorporate ads into your website, know that you are risking a definite decrease in visitor numbers.

Furthermore, know that most of your visitors will have some form of AdBlock installed. This means that even if your risk losing your audience through ads, you still won’t reach a large percentage of them. The “please disable your Adblock” popups often motivate people to simply leave your website and never return.

Issues with the page loading speed

If there is one thing that modern consumers expect from the web pages that they visit, it’s that they need to be fast and responsive. With the world moving at a rapid digital pace, people have grown accustomed to getting the information they need online in as little time as possible. We’ve become so accustomed to having fast loading apps and programs, that we have little patience for those that take noticeably longer. This leads to another common reason that people leave websites, which is issues with loading. If your website doesn’t load fast enough or fails to load a certain segment, know that your visitors will be quick to leave.

Unnecessary requirements

One of the main reasons why people leave websites is that the website owner put something between them and the content. Your goal should always be to bring your content to your readers as quickly as possible. Everything that you put between them is only going to be detrimental. Once you have their attention, you can proceed to ask for information or share.

What to keep in mind when making a website

The main point we want to make is that website owners make a lot of unnecessary mistakes when optimizing their websites. The easiest way to separate those mistakes is poor optimization and pushy behavior. It is paramount for you to understand that modern visitors expect a well-running, properly designed website. So, if they happen to stumble onto yours and it is not up to par, they are going to leave. Secondly, if you force your audience to do something before accessing the content, they are going to leave.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with ads or asking for visitor information, you need to keep in mind that there is a time and a place for everything. Your first priority should be to make a decent website with solid content. This includes proper optimization, style and brand development, and effective online marketing. Once you manage to market it successfully and see a decent online audience, then you can consider engaging your audience. But doing anything before that is simply going to cause