Common Reasons For Website Failure

5 MOST COMMON REASONS for WEBSITE FAILURE

How would you define a good website? Most people answer with something like this:

"I want to find what I'm looking for. Fast."

People visit websites because they're looking for solutions to problems. Even when they're playing Candy Crush, they're solving a problem. They're eliminating boredom or successfully putting off something they don't want to do.

Think back to the last time you were online. It's a pretty safe bet that you googled something, which means you were looking for a solution to a problem. You probably visited at least one website where you couldn't find what you were looking for.

The result? You left the website to find one where you could easily find what you were looking for.

The same thing happens on your website. People visit your site for specific information and go elsewhere if they can't find it. And since we're all super busy with attention spans shorter than goldfish, we want to find that info as quickly as possible.

Here are five common things that cause websites to fail...and what to do instead.

1. Confusing Navigation
Your navigation menu is the list of links at the top of your website (about, contact, etc). It's how people find their way around your website.

The names of your navigation items should clearly identify what they link to. Save your creativity for you work and use standard names in your navigation to make it easy for people to find things. If you have a link to your blog, call it 'blog' instead of 'musings' or 'thoughts'.

2. Homepage Overwhelm
A lot of people treat their homepage as a bulletin board. They cram as much onto its possible—image sliders, welcome messages, opt-ins, social media icons, blog posts, services, the works.
This completely overwhelms website visitors. There are too many options to choose from, so visitors choose none and leave the website.

Use your homepage to clearly guide visitors to complete your primary website goal, and direct them to what they should do next.

3. Not Mobile Responsive
You know those annoying websites you have to scrunch and zoom to be able to read on your phone? Those websites are not mobile responsive, which makes them hard to use on phones and tablets. 
60% of people use their phones to access the internet. Even when they're at home, people are online on their phones and tablets whilst watching TV. If your website is hard to read on mobile devices, they won't stick around.

Mobile responsiveness is such a big deal that, as of April 21st 2015, Google will penalize websites that aren't mobile-friendly by not displaying them in search results on mobile devices. That means your website will not be found by the 60% of people who are googling on their phones.

4. Hard to Read
People are busy, and sometimes just plain lazy. If your website is hard to read, they'll leave and find a website that doesn't make them squint.
Fonts, colors, contrast, hierarchy, line height, letter spacing, line length and whitespace are just some of the factors that contribute to readability. Web designers take all of these factors into consideration when designing a website because they know the importance of readability in keeping visitors on your website.
Here are two things to check without going into the geeky designer details:
Fonts
Have three people look at your website on computers and mobile devices. Can they easily read the text? Are any fonts hard to read? Is the text too small or too big?
Contrast

High contrast (black text on a white background) makes things easier to read. Low contrast (gray text on a slightly darker gray background) makes things harder to read. Ask those same three people if they can easily see the contrast between the text and background.

5. Form Frustration
I was about to buy an ebook the other day...until I hit the buy button. I was presented with a long form asking for my name, email address, mailing address, phone number, gender and date of birth.
What?! It was a simple PDF download to be paid with PayPal. Why were they asking all those irrelevant, personal details?
I left without buying the book. Shocker.
The same thing happens on your contact form, newsletter signup form, checkout form and other forms on your website. The more people have to fill out, they less likely they are to actually do it.

Keep your forms simple and only ask for information you actually need.