The website industry is ever-evolving. As trends come and go, web masters will jump onto new developments and stick to them for various reasons. Some are intrigued by the ingenuity, some the practicality, and some the performance. As a result many ideas that become staples in professional web design will turn away users who aren’t interested in the industry on a professional level.
Below are 3 popular trends you have probably seen that turn visitors off and can hinder the performance of your website.
1. Sliders Or Slideshows
The tried and true image slider is one of the most commonly used features on home pages across the web.
Why Web Designers Love Them:
The image slider allows a designer to display multiple products and/or messages in one location. If your business offers three main services a designer goes to the logical solution of making one slide for each service and rotating them indefinitely. This will ensure users get equal exposure to each service.
Why Your Users Hate Them:
The average user has an attention span of 5-7 seconds when visiting a new website. Time is spent scanning the website and by the time the user begins to read the sliders it changes. With such short attention spans most users won’t wait for the message to rotate back around before leaving.
How They Should Be Used:
Sliders can be used effectively to display multiple product samples without altering the messaging. Do not alter the calls-to-action or headings in each slide. Use the slide to scroll through background images while keeping the most important message consistent. The background images should reinforce the message by displaying popular products or services.
Having each slide share a theme could also work. Have one main message with 2-3 slides offering strong selling points to the main message. Each selling point should be strong enough by itself to work but multiply in strength when tied together.
2. Social Lockers
Social lockers force users to ‘like’ a website on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or another social media outlet before proceeding to the content.
Why Social Media Marketers Love Them:
Social lockers can be a short-term success. With a well shared blog article you can gain a chunk of fans in a small period of time.
Why Your Users Hate Them:
Social lockers are seen as a desperate way to force users to follow you. They are often used in a deceptive manner by offering a cool article or video for free “But first, please like us for more of this awesome content”. This make users feel cheated and they respond by leaving. A study by Digital Ready Marketing showed that content with a social locker had a bounce rate of 91%. When the social lockers were removed the bounce rate dropped to the high 60% range.
How They Should Be Used:
Sparingly. Do not use social lockers on all blog posts and certainly not important website pages, they will turn away traffic and increase bounce rates. Release high-value posts that are exclusive to social followers as “extra content” or “exclusive content”. Wait for your followers to share with friends and be upfront about the content being exclusive to followers. This will also make followers feel like they are receiving value for their loyalty.
3. Click-Bait & Paginated Slideshows
Why Internet Marketers Love Them:
The idea behind click-bait is to use people’s curiosity to maximize clicks on a post, and visits to a page. This is often magnified by placing a top 10 list in a paginated slideshow so that every list item has it’s own page therefore getting 10 times as many pageviews. By placing ad space on each page, it’s like getting a 10 for 1 deal.
Why Your Users Hate Them:
Users will click into a clickbait article to satisfy their curiosity but rarely go deeper than 3 clicks.
How They Should Be Used:
They shouldn’t. Time spent on page of poor quality click bait content is really low. Google reads behaviour statistics like time spent on page and pageviews to determine quality of traffic. When these numbers do not impress Google it will hinder performance in organic rankings.
More Marketing Tips From A Digital Marketing Agency:
Why Are My Google Ads Wasting Money?
Is Your Company Getting Found On Google? How To Tell If Your SEO Sucks In 5 Seconds
The Marketing Garage is an award-winning Toronto digital marketing agency that has extensive experience in cultivating effective digital marketing strategies. We help businesses in many different sectors across North America fix their marketing. Our data-driven mix of SEO and digital marketing process is like no other.
