Your website is one of your company’s greatest assets. Since that’s true, it’s essential that it provides a positive user experience. Unfortunately, many sites’ website features miss the mark and, when they do, it has a negative impact on the organization behind them.
Your website is likely the first place visitors go to learn more about your NPO. If it presents a bad user experience, they’ll bounce before they take any of the actions you want them to take. This, in turn, costs you money, donations, and support.
With that in mind, here are a few things users will either love or hate about your site.
5 Website Features Users Hate
If your website features any of the following, you can improve your conversions and user experience by fixing them STAT:
1. Slow Load Times
According to HubSpot, 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less, and 40% abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load.
Even a one-second delay decreases customer satisfaction by about 16%.
That said, it’s essential to ensure your site loads as quickly as possible. Not sure where yours stands? Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool for an overview and suggestions to speed your page up.
2. Sites That Aren’t Optimized for Mobile
Google prioritizes mobile-friendly sites, users love them, and they fit in well with our on-the-go lifestyle.
Those are just a few of the reasons that upwards of 80% of the top Alexa websites are mobile adaptive, and a massive 51% of all digital ad budgets were spent on mobile optimization in 2016.
If you’re not sure where to start optimizing your site for mobile, you’re not alone.
The fact is, NPOs have some special considerations when it comes to optimizing their websites for mobile.
Check out our recent posts on the topic for more information.
3. Sites That Are Hard to Navigate
According to research conducted by Small Business Trends, 80% of small business websites surveyed in 2013 lacked a call-to-action (CTA).
While this may not seem like a huge deal, a missing CTA makes it hard for people to understand how to navigate your site and can reduce your conversions.
With this in mind, add a CTA in relevant positions on your site.
Looking for additional ways to make your site easy to navigate? Add elements like hamburger menus, a home icon on each page, and a search bar.
4. Pop-Ups (Sometimes)
As a general rule, pop-ups can be unwelcome additions to your website. Not only are they annoying, but they interrupt your users’ experience and can make your page less satisfying to navigate. While there are some way popups can be extremely effective, they are usually done wrong on the web.
To that end, Google introduced what it called the “Intrusive Interstitial Update” back in 2016. This update took aim at intrusive pop-ups that could cause issues for visitors viewing content on small, mobile screens.
Here’s Google’s illustration of the popups negatively affected by the update:
The following pop-ups, on the other hand, aren’t intrusive enough to be affected by the update, so they’re the ones you should use if you want to install popups on your site:
5. Autoplay Content
In recent years, video content has exploded in popularity. While this is a positive development for users (videos are easy to digest and engaging), it comes with one serious drawback: autoplay.
Today, 61% of video ads autostart in Chrome. This is a problem because it can be intrusive and annoying to users. In fact, videos that autoplay are directly linked to increasing rates of ad blocking.
If you’re going to use multimedia content, don’t make it auto-play. By giving them the option to play or not play your video, you offer more autonomy to your users. If you must use autoplay, take a note from Facebook and set the video to mute unless the customer manually adjusts the volume.
5 Website Features Users Love
Make your website more user-friendly by ensuring it does these five things:
1. It Loads Quickly
Not only does this reduce your bounce rate, but it makes people want to interact with your site.
2. It’s Responsive
Mobile, desktop, or laptop – your site doesn’t care! When a site performs beautifully on all platforms, it becomes more customer-centric and intuitive.
3. It’s Easy to Read
In addition to catering to numerous platforms, your site should be easy to read. This means using black text, white background, minimal animations, and ample white space.
4. It’s Intuitive
Intuitive sites mean that visitors know where to click next. Everything works the way it should. If they want to donate, they can find the place to do that. There’s no guesswork involved with these sites, and users love that.
5. It’s Informative
Your website should offer valuable content to the reader. It should answer their questions and help them understand your mission. If there are questions you get frequently, compile them into an FAQ page. Not only does this make must-have information easier for users to find, but it can help you rank in Google’s “featured snippets” box.
Improve Your Website
If visitors hate a few features of your website, don’t despair. While it’s essential to pay attention to these things, it’s also important to remember you can change them. By making your site more user-friendly, intuitive, and responsive, you can increase your donation rates, earn more dedicated visitors, and help your NPO grow.
Looking for quality help with your website? Contact Creative Science Labs for website design and development services!
