Your Site is so Pretty, it’s a Shame it Doesn’t Work.

Kristina Witmer

One thing is for sure, it’s pretty easy to get a slick looking website nowadays. Responsive templates are everywhere – making the desktop, mobile, tablet experience fairly seamless. Depth, slick icons, social integration – it’s ALL there and oh so pretty to the eye.

But give me a bad user experience and your pretty colors and design look like crap (sorry mom).  As I was doing some internet research (a follow-up to my previous post on facebook’s growth, and getting increasingly annoyed, I thought I’d compile a list for you. I’m sure there’s more in case you want to add.

Issues that are forgivable, but so easy to fix that if you aren’t monitoring this, shame on you:

  • Broken links / dead ends – I get it, things change, and fast. This stuff happens. But run the reports monthly / quarterly and fix this stuff.
  • Typos – The copywriters I work with and I greatly disagree on this item, but it needs to be attended to. I say typos are humanity and humanity is AWESOME in writing. But there are those that disagree and it drives them crazy. So do yourself a favor, have a web editor review your posts and more importantly, your web site content.

Issues that make me scream and want to broadcast loudly and as publicly as possible:

  • Load Delays. I see what’s happening in the bottom left corner of my browser. I see that I’m waiting for sales.net.liveperson to load. We call this killing 2 brands with one stone. Yourself and the vendor you’ve chosen to use for live chat on your site.
  • More Load Delays. Anything that happens in the bottom left is always suspect. It’s loading, but oh is it slow. And I see that I’m waiting for a doubleclick banner to load. Really, you are going to make me WAIT to get an ad? Seriously.
  • Annoyances. I’ll compile too many ads, music and auto play of video into this category. Anytime you take control from the user you inevitably lose.

So here’s to the balance of function and aesthetics. As marketers it’s what we all strive for. And it’s always rewarded.