When websites deliver frustration to their browsers, those browsers leave and don’t come back. Websites that do not take account of what’s intuitive and pleasing for browsers through good UX design will incur the double-negative of high bounce rates and losing out in search engine rankings.
Online is now the primary battleground for the competition for consumer attention. With so many businesses forced to embrace their digital existence in 2020, the standards in UX design have leapt. Smart businesses know that their websites and online processes must be designed with the user in mind, and avoid browser frustration at all costs.
What can you do to avoid frustrating browsers?
The most important thing you can do in your website build, or redesign, is to work with a web developer who understands the importance of UX design, how to achieve it and the pitfalls to avoid. You will get far more value and longevity from a website that is designed with care and attention to browsers’ feelings.
For instance, does your web developer spend time working out the user journey? Do they test platforms? To help you in your web design process, we’ve listed some of the classic causes of browser frustration so you can make sure your website avoids.
Causes of browser frustration:
Forcing browsers to sign in at inconvenient times
Clunky signing-in processes are a significant cause of browser frustration, but forcing visitors to sign in, perhaps even before browsing (honestly – we’ve seen it), or midway through browsing will cause distress, mistrust and annoyance to shoppers. At the very least, they will simply leave.
Ask, what’s in it for the browser? It must be in a browser’s best interests to sign in or they just won’t. They can shop elsewhere where their browsing is welcomes, rather than blocked. Remember, you are asking a browser to invest in you when you ask them to sign in. What have you given them prior to this point to make them want to invest their precious time and effort?
Page speed
Two seconds is the recommended time limit for a page to load on an e-commerce site, and is the time Google recommends. Any longer and you risk causing frustration.
Lots of graphics and page dynamics can make a page load slowly and incorrectly, with only some parts of it viewable. A satisfying experience for a browser? Absolutely not.
Make sure your web developer knows how to optimise page loading times.
Poor information architecture
Confusing website navigation and menu options will frustrate your browsers. Simple things like consistency of page titles and headings, avoiding technical jargon, and providing clear signposts to featured information will all help to make your browser feel confident and reassured within the structure of your site.
Links leading to error messages and promises of further information that do not lead correctly to where they say they will be are known to be top causes of browser frustration.
Giving the impression you don’t care
A neglected user experience, through any of the above negative practices, demonstrates that you don’t care about your browsers. Browsers get the impression you are far from engaging with them and their wants, they mistrust you. It’s extreme, but unfortunately true that neglected browser experience gives an impression of arrogance.
The upshot of all these negative feelings of course is that the browser will run for the hills and you’ll never see them again.
But we’re a really good company to deal with!
You might be a GREAT company to deal with. Your customer service may be award-winning. But it must come through in the browsers’ online experience, otherwise your engagement through digital will suffer.
Ensure that your web developer is one who will carefully think through each browser touch point to understand and anticipate your audience’s wants and needs. In your website, give helpful options, be clear, and don’t hassle your browsers with pop-ups, ads and sign-in, or review, requests before they’ve even done anything to review or seen anything they want to buy.
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