5 Things To Remove From Your Website to Improve Your Visitor’s Experience

Your website is your best marketing tool. It’s easy to share, will do practically anything you want and is available 24/7. All the working components are ready and able but what about your visitor’s experience? Navigating a website should feel effortless. Your visitor should be able to navigate your content easily as your website should magically anticipate their needs and intuitively present them with they want next, right when they want it.

How good is your site’s user experience? If you’re like most, the answer would be ‘ok’. ‘Ok’ is ok but ‘good’ would be better right? If you think so, you’re going to like this post.

With the slight twist of ‘removal’ (usually we’re adding things), we’d like to help you improve your user experience with 5 things to remove from your website to improve your visitor’s experience.

1. Long Cumbersome Text Blocks
   Nobody reads long boring amounts of text anymore, definitely not web surfers. You might like it but if nobody’s reading it what’s the point of having it? Break it up. Be considerate of people’s time and habits by breaking it into shorter pieces. Use bulletpoints, sentence fragments and pull quotes to make it more fun to read. If people aren’t confronted with boredom then maybe they’ll actually read your stuff.
2. Nondescript Anchor Text
   Anchor text is the text of a sentence that shows you where the link is. A sentence like “To download our wonderful brochure Click Here” could be a lot more inviting. Try “Download our wonderful brochure.” Not only is it infinitely more descriptive to your human visitors, search engines love it too. “Click Here” tells the search engine nothing about the link at all but the text “Download our wonderful brochure” tells the search engine exactly that the link is for your wonderful brochure! Better communication means better interaction results.
3. Flash and Javascript Menus
   Flash is a all-but defunct graphic technology that still lingers on some websites. It doesn’t work on many mobile devices and poses a number of security risks. Get rid of it. Javascript is a coding language that was once used to build navigation menus. Search engines can’t process its links and won’t catalog the linked pages. Get rid of it.

   HTML5 is an excellent way to replace both. By the way, javascript used on your site is fine. Just not in your navigation.

4. Your Email Address
   Your email address on your website probably seems pretty logical but it has deal-breaking downsides. When a visitor clicks your email address, their device tries to open an email client (Outlook, Mail, Thunderbird). But what if they normally use webmail instead? Or what if they’re not using their own computer? Also, you’re sending your visitor away from your site to write an email. Seriously?!? NEVER send people away to work with you.

   And let’s not even talk about the amount of spam you’re going to get. Replace all your email address links with web forms. Do it right now!

5. Unnecessary Form Fields
   Have a web form that asks for lots of information? Do you really need to know company URL, address, web address and fax number right now?!? No you don’t. The amount of ‘friction’ you place in your communication process reduces your lead generation rate. Less friction, better lead generation. If you really need all that information, get it later on your followup phone call. Only the bare minimum fields on your web forms please.
6. BONUS! Dead Pages
   Do you have pages that YOU think are awesome but nobody else does? How about a testimonials page? FYI, nobody goes to your testimonials page, trust me. How about a gallery page (provided you’re not a photographer). Testimonials and gallery photos should be interspersed throughout your site to gain their full effect. Check your analytics report to find your lowest performing pages. If they have great content but few visits, clip the content and place it somewhere people will care.

THE TAKEAWAY

As a business owner, you have an easy opportunity at addition through subtraction by removing just a few unnecessary items. Performing these simple adjustments is a quick and easy way to improve your visitor’s experience, make search engines happy and boost your lead generation rate.

Whether you’re adjusting your website or if you have something else in mind let the premier web developer in Maryland help. Let’s talk about how we can put that website of yours to better use!

1. Social media buttons in the header –
2. Dead end pages –
3. Meaningless content areas –
4. Blog dates –
5. Impersonal calls to action (buttons and links) –