10 complaints the customers have about the design of corporate web sites
Your website is your corporate presence to the online world, available any time from anywhere. It’s critical that it makes the impression you want to give.
Over the past few years, the internet has evolved into the go-to choice for prospective customers looking to research their options. As they have become more technically savvy and experienced, their expectations of company websites have evolved as well.
Here are some key, but often overlooked, pet peeves that can quickly turn off these visitors.
1. Lack of Contact Information. A visitor to a commercial website should be able to quickly find the company’s name, address – preferably with a map, if the operation has a storefront, and contact phone number.
2. Registration Needed for Basic Information. A recent survey showed that more than half of all people asked said this was a pet peeve likely to send them away from a site. Information about a company’s services and offerings should be quickly and easily attainable.
3. Site Search Tool Failure. Hand-in-hand with the previous point, visitors to a company site often have specific questions in mind. Allowing them to search your site efficiently to get the information they seek sends the message that you value their interest and time.
4. Dead Links. The frustration factor here is secondary to the impression of poor maintenance and lack of investment by the company in its impression.
5. Pop-ups. While a new window can be an effective tool, it should be used sparingly due to its connotations with hard sells and spam. With so many browsers blocking pop-ups, they are often not seen by site visitors in any event.
6. Requires installation of extra software to view the site. While a site need not cater to the lowest common browser abilities, it should also not assume that everyone who visits is surfing on the latest and most up-to-date browser. Here is an example of why it can be very smart to hire assistance in designing a website. The experts in this area know how to make it accessible to the most people.
7. Slow-loading Pages. Like the need for extra software, a good website design will allow for the quick and painless load of its pages – especially the splash, or front, page that creates the initial impression of the website.
8. Poor language. One of the key turn-offs for a new visitor to a site is one of the easiest to fix: poor grammar and spelling. The errors shout a lack of attention to detail that prospective customers assume carries over to all aspects of a business.
9. Inability to Go Back. This is a call for clear and intuitive navigation. A primary issue that triggers customer frustration is an inability to easily return to a prior page or the main site.
10. Out of Date Information. An outdated copyright date or an expired offering calls all the information on a website into question as to its correctness.
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