Does Your Website Annoy Your Customers? 5 Tips to Make Your Website Less Annoying

Every website is different, while they all have similar attributes, every website is bringing something unique to the table. In an effort to make a client's website unique, many web designers go overboard with flashy effects and sometimes overwhelm the visitors. Whether it be a client's request or an attempt to be different, the last thing you want your website to do is annoy or offend your customers.

The goal of any website is to attract and retain visitors, and for businesses, your website is an essential marketing tool that should help you generate profits. When you design your website, keep your customer in mind, so while you may think background music gives your pottery website an ambiance, say some Billy Idol song chorus on repeat, you need to ask yourself one question. Is this Billy Idol song relative to my brand? To my content or message?

Top 5 Annoying Website Habits to Avoid

Background Music

Sure, we all know you like to listen to Conway Twitty and your favorite song is Lady Gaga's "Poker Face.". But how is this relevant to your website? Music on a web site is generally a complete "Do Not Pass Go" situation. Web site background music not only drops load speed on your website, but generally annoys your customers. The possibility that they won't like your music, will be turned off by it, or will be offended by it is fairly high, and you may risk annoying them by having to reload the song every time they go to a new page. It is a good idea to refrain from playing music on your website completely unless you're a musician or sell music.

Abnormally Small Font Sizes and Colors

If you've left off the "adjust font size" function from your website, it's recommended that you stay with a normal sized font. Normal is a range between 10-14 depending on your specific font. The goal is to be able to read your web site's font at a reasonable distance from the screen. If your viewers have to place there glasses against their screen in order to read your page, you may need to adjust your sizes. Which leads to the next annoying point. Font colors come in hundreds of variations, but what is the best choice? Examples off annoying font colors could be: bright yellow on a white background, or light pink on a maroon purple background. Your font color should reflect your page's colors, but should be pleasing enough to the eye that your user can avoid squinting at the bright, obnoxious color palette you've chosen to blind them with.



Flash Websites, Banners and Animations

There are many web designers that will stand strongly behind flash based websites. They argue that they are beneficial, and can be optimized for search engines. But to the end user, let's face it, they're just plain annoying. Generally, a flash based website will have a strangely designed intro, that has to load before you can see it. Then the website itself will load, and many times leads you to some icons. These icons are supposed to be a menu, but you can't tell until you click it. These websites looks very artistic, but as a user friendly option they almost always fall short. So for the potential website purchaser, avoid flash as often as possible. It works well for an advertisement, maybe an image gallery, but flash should be limited to these options. The bottom line with flash comes to this, it's confusing, often repetitive, and most of the time, it just annoys your users.

Pop-ups

First of all, if you're attempting to use pop-ups whether it's for ads or content, remember that most browsers will block them. Secondly, pop-ups annoy everyone, why would you intentionally annoy your visitors with pop-ups knowing very well that they probably annoy you personally. Let's face it, pop-up windows are dead. There was a time where they worked, and tricked people into clicking and may have generated some revenue. But at what cost? Is adding 16 cents per pop-up worth the cost of annoying your potential customers?

Hidden Content

There is by far nothing that annoys me more than content that I just can't seem to find. When you use a search engine to find answers to a problem, you hope the top ranking site will fulfill your needs quickly, but that's not always the case. Hiding your content deep in the bowels of your website is not only annoying, but results in very low SEO results. Make sure that all your relevant information and content is no more than 2 clicks away from your web site's homepage. If your visitors can't find your content, they aren't going to keep coming back.