Average bounce rate is usually between 46 and 51%. This means that one half of all internet users view only one page on each website they open. Bounce rates on blogs and news media websites are even higher. With this in mind, it is easy to realize that web masters need to invest more effort into building an outstanding UX and navigation, which will inspire visitors to spend more time on their websites. In order to help webmasters, I’ve listed the 5 most annoying UX experiences.
Burying post’s publishing date
Since I list dozens of blog posts per day, to find reliable blogging sources, I find this practice particularly annoying. Writers often bury post’s publishing date in order to keep their content relevant for extended period of time. Of course, this also increases website’s bounce rate, because for many users publishing date is very important, if not crucial. For example, I regularly write posts about smart phones, and in my quest for relevant sources, I often stumble upon posts from 2010, the year when Samsung Galaxy 3 and iPhone 4 were unveiled. Since earlier smart phone generations had completely different features, these posts are completely useless for my research.
Pop-ups
Web masters add different types of pop-ups to their pages. Some require you to register or subscribe in order to view premium content, while others come with advertising messages, call-to-action buttons or small surveys. Each one of these pop-ups is equally annoying to website visitors. Even the returning visitors who decided to buy something would rather use regular website navigation than suspicious looking pop-up button.
Content galleries
This is definitely one of the most annoying features of content websites. Unfortunately, even some of the most popular online magazines use galleries to show content that contains lots of photographs. Website visitors don’t want to click 10 or 15 times, just to read one mediocre article. The bottom goal of placing content into slideshow galleries is to increase the overall number of ad clicks, but since many visitors quit reading these articles after one or a few slides, these types of content arrangements definitely don’t improve websites’ earnings. Some web administrators realized this, so they’ve introduced two content schemes per one article. For example Business Insider allows you to see their photos by using gallery slides, or by using regular page scroll.
No about page
Many small websites don’t contain ‘About’ page that provides basic information about: product, business or organization they stand for. You will often find a link for an app’s microsite that is made in one page layout, which only lists app’s features and provides you with package price information. But how can you buy something, you don’t know nothing about? Do these webmasters really think that the simple list of app’s (standard) features will initiate a buying frenzy? If you want to sell you product, you need to explain it in detail.
Additional steps
Many e-commerce web masters are adding needless fields and forms to their check out pages. Some of them ask their visitors to type captcha code, in order to prove they are not robots. Eliminating spam robots and bots from your website is a relevant goal, but complicated captcha fields are not the appropriate tools for achieving this. The most experienced Magento developers advise web designers to eliminate all irrelevant forms. Visitors hate captcha fields, especially the ones that contain photos and signs that look blurry and illegible. Killing captcha fields is an easy fix that will definitely increase your overall checkout. You should also kill all unnecessary ‘sign in’ forms. Most of these are used for marketing purposes, and they pose a risk for customers, as well as for the company that stores their data.
Web design trends are quickly changing. Today’s websites feature minimalism, blended typography and one page layouts, while just a decade back they mostly featured 3D buttons and flash animations. Web designers and administrators need to constantly adapt their websites and introduce the latest plugins and apps in order to improve their presentations’ UX.
