The UX Kill List: 5 User Experience Issues and How to Fix Them
Did you know that 88% of your unique visitors will never return to your website if they are not satisfied with its initial performance?
The two frequently quoted case studies on this topic, conducted by Gomez and Akamai, reached the same conclusion: 73% of the visitors that they surveyed, reported that they’ve encountered a website that was too slow to load. 40% of them left the web page after two seconds of waiting.
One of the major UX factors is definitely site speed. If you’ve just launched a website that takes 3 seconds or more to load, and there is hardly any brand awareness about your company, organization or blog on the web, all chances are that your bounce rate will start skyrocketing immediately.
However, this doesn’t mean that you are encountering a serious problem. On the contrary, most of the websites, if not every single website that you are visiting on the regular, are optimized, and their staff is working hard on delivering great user experience. It is just a matter of staying in touch with your online presence.
So let’s dig into potential problems that are keeping you away from gaining more returning visitors, more engagement on the site and more unique visitors as well. On our list of five issues total, some of them you can fix today and some of them you should start fixing today if you want them to see the results anytime soon. Here is your ultimate UX kill list.
Killing Captcha Field (an easy fix)
Have you ever encountered a captcha form and said: “Great, another captcha field, I can’t wait to solve it!”
If you did, then you are one of the rare visitors who actually don’t mind typing additional text to prove that they are not robots. Believe it or not, people hate Captcha so much that you shouldn’t be surprised if your conversion rate shows a 3.2% increase if you kill it today, because it has happened before.
So do you really need a Captcha? Review that decision, because it seems that it’s driving your users away from your conversion funnel.
Killing Fields, Yet Again (piece of cake)
Long sign up forms are ok if you are offering a product that everyone would love to have. You have to have a ground-breaking offer if you expect people to spend 10 minutes signing up for it. 86% of users actually hate doing that. On the other hand, if people are not fighting over your product or service, maybe that’s because they were unable to reach it. Long sign up forms are influencing your conversions in a negative way.
This is why people often limit themselves to a three step sign up form – Name, Email and Password, and after that, they are creating a demand deeper in the steps of their sales funnel, once they have the visitor’s attention.
Another alternative that is getting more and more popular is Social Login, which will do wonders for your conversion rate and you can implement it in 30 minutes or less.
The Breaking Point: Inconsistency (here’s where the troubles start)
80% of decision makers expect to find out more about your company through content. They expect a series of advertisements and digital content in general, delivered frequently. Since this issue could be easily dealt with, but can also present your bottom line’s horror, take special care of this seemingly simple fix.
½ of this problem affects your day-to-day activities. If you are working in a business to business company, your marketing strategy is probably conducting your tone of voice, slogan consistency, overall brand message presence and target audience engagement. The experience of communication, its regular tone, and its driving energy should define a relationship through all stages of your funnel. 60% of 18 to 33-year-old consumers expect consistency throughout every stage of communication – from marketing to sales and customer relationship. While you can tune up and edit your images, social media profile and slogan frequency today, staying loyal to your audience, prospects, and overall clients is a task which requires commitment.
Everything from your brand colors consistency (which add up to 80% of color recognition to your brand) to your email signature, navigation consistency, and tone of voice are crucial factors for a high-quality user experience.
Major Killing Machines: Pop Ups (when not to pop up)
No one ever loved a pop-up.
The only person who will appreciate your pop up on the website is your returning visitor, who’s done with all the research and now he wants the offer. But if you are someone who is counting on returning visitors to make a purchase, be advised that your new visitors may become a somewhat dynamical metric to follow up on. If you are implementing series of pop-ups without a steady flow of new visitors, or if there are yet no conversions on your website whatsoever – your pop-ups are only driving your prospects away.
That is a basic rookie mistake and it will kill your traffic.
User Interface (The Terminator)
Are you certain that your visitors know what to do once they reach your website?
If you need to explain it to them – they probably don’t know, and will not be bothered to take the time and learn how to navigate through your website, your order form, or through your app for that matter.
That is why it is always a smart idea to have your website continuously optimized for conversions. In that way, you will address every step of your funnel to provide better UX, including your UI. We actually wrote about it awhile back, so start here.
Be prepared for some mind-bending workload though. You will have to question your forms, your navigation interface, your site loading speed, problems simple as your call to actions and time-consuming tasks such as web development.
The end result? A User Interface that will always provide clear instructions, or even better – offer a truly intuitive platform. Don’t forget that your User Interface and your User Experience are the two inseparable entities, and yet they are two completely different things.
Oh, and if you are planning on having that autoplay video on your website, be aware of the risks.
