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Top Website Frustrations That Drive Visitors Away and How to Fix Them

With only an average of 15 seconds to make an impression on a website visitor, you can’t afford to allow frustrating issues to drive them away. There has never been a more important time to focus on improving the user-friendliness of your website than in 2025. Learn the common user experience frustrations that a professional web design company can assist with so that you can enjoy a better return on your website investment. By identifying these mistakes, you can potentially even stop them before they are implemented into your website in the first place.

Slow Load Times

Nobody wants to visit a website only for it to take years to finally load. If a webpage refuses to load within a few seconds, maximum, a user is going to leave the site and the search engines will ding your website. The most common causes of this issue include large images that are improperly formatted, poor hosting services, or unoptimized code that is resulting in issues. There are a myriad of ways to fix this, but focus on optimizing assets, using a faster hosting website, or implementing performance monitoring software. These small tweaks can help you fine-tune your website to ensure that only the most vital resources are being used.

Confusing Navigation

While your website might appear easy to use from your perspective, others may have a hard time navigating it. If this is the case and they can’t find what they need within a few seconds of getting onto your site, they will most likely just leave. The common culprits that make websites difficult to navigate include hidden menus, too many options to narrow things down, or unclear labeling on the site. To avoid this, streamline your menus so that it’s obvious where a user needs to click to see the options. Your website should also have a natural flow to it, so test run your design with a trial group to see how easily they navigate things. You should also try to follow a logical page hierarchy, such as linking related pages to one another rather than keeping them separate.

Non-Mobile-Friendly Design

Considering that 32% of adults use smartphones to make purchases, failing to optimize your website for mobile-viewing is a horrible idea. This statistic will only increase with time, meaning you need to ensure your website looks good and easy-to-navigate on a mobile device. Tiny buttons, content overalls, and horizontal scrolling issues can all lead a mobile-user to exit your site. If this happens consistently enough, your website will get penalized by the search engines. Avoid this by starting with a mobile-first design then expanding out to a standard webpage. You should also implement responsive layout testing that allows you to see how your website comes across to those viewing, as you can then make changes in real time to adjust.

Auto-Playing Media or Pop-Ups

Nobody wants to be browsing a website only to be interrupted by a frustrating pop-up or media that plays automatically. This can distract and disrupt a person’s focus and, especially considering they may be looking at buying a product, it’s the last thing you want your users to go through. Any videos with sound or aggressive lead-generative pop-ups should be compartmentalized or, at the very least, shrunk so that they don’t interrupt the eye-line of someone viewing your site. Develop thoughtful interactivity for your website or consider delayed content that doesn’t play right away. Better yet, consider adding in user-triggered content that only starts playing when a user activates it, so that they know exactly what’s going to happen.

Inconsistent Branding and Visual Clutter

There’s nothing more confusing and aesthetically displeasing than inconsistent branding and visual clutter on a website. This can lead to an erosion of trust and the emergence of cognitive dissonance through the use of too many colors and fonts, off-brand visuals, and a general lack of whitespace. Preventing this issue will require you to develop a cohesive visual identity for your brand while using whitespace strategically. On top of this, you need to utilize clean design language that website viewers of all ages can understand and interpret.

Lack of Clear Calls-to-Action (CTAs)

At the end of the day, the purpose of a website is to drive conversions, meaning you want to turn those viewing the site into paying customers. The only way to go about this effectively is to implement call-to-actions on your website which prompt users on what to do. However, far too many modern websites either have no CTA, too many CTAs (to the point a user is overwhelmed), or general poor CTA placement. Fixing this is as easy as strategically placing action-oriented CTAs that aligns with user intent so that someone is prompted to take action while not being annoyed by your site.

Outdated or Irrelevant Content

One of the quickest ways to turn someone away from your site is to have outdate or irrelevant content as compared to their needs. This situation diminishes your creditability and will negatively impact the SEO of your website which is why it should be avoided. Broken links, old blog posts, and irrelevant info are the biggest culprits of this issue, so conduct regular content audits, go-ahead with regular updates, and employ dynamic content strategy techniques to avoid the issue.

Bolster the effect of your website SEO

Nobody wants to come to the realization that their website is poorly designed, but failing to realize this will only hurt your brand in the long-run. This is why it’s important to focus on implementing a good design that removes friction, builds trust, and keeps users engaged with your page for as long as possible. By doing this, you can turn more website visitors into paying customers which will bolster your SEO in turn. If you have no experience with website design or are just getting your business off the ground, consider reaching out to a professional web design partner who can advise on SEO best practices while ensuring your site reads like one which will convert prospects to customers.

Susan Melony