Tweet

4 Easy Ways to Dissatisfy Your Visitors

Written by: Stoney G deGeyter

Article Overview: Since creating a website that is "user friendly" is often difficult and time consuming, I thought it would be fun to explore a few ways to create a dissatisfying user experience on your website. Unlike the dozens upon dozens of things that go into creating a website that provides a positive visitor experience, one that creates an atmosphere of trust and is likely to improve conversion rates, creating a dissatisfying experience can be done fairly easily in just a few steps.

4 Easy Ways to Dissatisfy Your Visitors

Since creating a website that is "user friendly" is often difficult and time consuming, I thought it would be fun to explore a few ways to create a dissatisfying user experience on your website. Unlike the dozens upon dozens of things that go into creating a website that provides a positive visitor experience, one that creates an atmosphere of trust and is likely to improve conversion rates, creating a dissatisfying experience can be done fairly easily in just a few steps.

In fact, while I'm sure there are just as many things that can derail a visitor on a website, there is no need to implement more than a few. We have found that any *one* of the four things listed below will do the trick!

*** Not able to find specific information ***

Visitors come to your site for a reason. Maybe they are researching a topic, seeking to gain information, or are comparing differences between your offerings and a competitor’s. In any case, your visitors are often searching for something specific, and maybe they even want to take action once they have the vital pieces of information they seek. Maybe that information is product specifications, pricing info, or perhaps just a phone or email address. Do what you can to hide this important information. Be sure to provide only basic, general information about your topic, product or services and avoid any decision clinching specifics.

If you feel you absolutely must provide more information, make sure that it is buried in the midst of a lot of text or that any links to this information is difficult to find. Nothing says we hate you like hiding important details or contact information!

*** Confusing website ***

People are easily confused, which makes this an easy task to accomplish. Don't waste much energy thinking about things such as layout, design or navigational consistency. When developing your content, speak in broad vague terms and use as much industry technobabble as possible. Don't worry about website architecture either, that's just a huge time-consuming task that ultimately prevents your visitors from having to do any real work to get the information they need. If you make it all too easy, then your visitors won't feel that your information is valuable.

*** Slow website ***

If you happen to have a lightning fast server you might want to find a new one. You're probably paying too much for hosting anyway. But if switching hosts is too much of a problem, and then see what you can do to slow it down. You can do this quite easily by using poorly implemented code, excessive code bloat or extremely large images. Add lots of flashy tools and multimedia that *must* be used such as flash based websites that have to download the full file first.
Since many metrics services look at time spent on a website as an indicator of a site's overall value, the more you slow things down the better things look. Slow sites mean visitors must remain on the site longer just to get the information they need. This can be a boon to advertising.

*** Broken Links ***

Nothing tells your visitors that you care than handfuls of broken links on your site. I suggest you change URLs frequently and that you *don't* perform monthly broken link checks. This is actually entertaining to your visitors because broken links create something of a game. And who doesn't love a good game of hide and seek, right?

There you have it, four quick and easy ways to dissatisfy your customers. The great thing about these is that you don't have to think to hard about any of them. In fact, they require hardly any thought at all. When I think about how best to go about creating this kind of unusable environment two words come to mind, random and haphazard. Not only are those both fun words, but they make for a fun website.

Related Articles
  Is Your Website Doing Its Job?
  1ShoppingCart Tip For Maximizing Your Marketing Efforts When Using 1ShoppingCart
  Getting Inside the Head of the Web User
  Converting Every Visitor into Subscriber
  Affiliate Marketing Business Tips To Make Online Income

Article Tags: atmosphere of trust, competitor, consistency, conversion rates, creating a website, dozens upon dozens, important information, information visitors, layout design, many things, midst, offerings, specifics, technobabble, thinking about things, time consuming, user experience, vague terms, visitor experience, vital pieces



Related Forum Posts
Re: e-Commerce and e-Payment providers - When I came back to Japan in 1999 I sometimes used to ask my students if they would buy anything on the Internet and at that time most thought it was too risky. I'd encourage them to try by using well known sites such as Amazon.co.jp and also pointed out that using a credit card on a reputable site was safer than using it at a restaurant. I can't remember the last time I had that discussion or when the "tipping point" occurred in Japan. To answer your other question, I use Paypal for several reasons: 1. Brand familiarity 2. Easy to use 3. Free to withdraw 50,000yen+ to my Japanese bank account - a huge benefit (but maybe other systems also offer that...?) 4. Easy to cancel subscriptions On the down side, their transaction fees are quite costly, they are difficult to contact and when disputes arise you can sometimes lose even when you can prove via your tracking service that the disputed item was "delivered" to the customer's address!
Re: Domain name sugestion - Hi Anelly, Support-Box.com sounds very good to me. Easy and catchy.
Delegating - Good info and interesting list. Easy to see how the authority or power is slowly passed to the person - the secret would be knowing WHEN to move to the next step. I like to avoid people who are stuck at the #1 level. Chris
Re: Ideas For Business - Stas and lucy, Could you guys give us a recap of your entire business idea as it stands now. Seems like it morped a bit. Let us know: 1. Start date 2. Ways you will Market 3. What you will offer 4. How much will your charge for your offer
Re: Has anyone bought targetted visitors? - Most "Targeted Visitors" do not look for your site or intend on going to it. Most of the vsisits are generated through popups and popunders. Some of the targeted visitor sites allow you to create an online add that people can click and go to your site but I have never heard of anyone getting so much as a newsletter signup from them. I think it would be more productive to take the money you would spend on guaranteed visitors, guaranteed signups, buying leads etc. and use it to advertise on some of the higher page rank websites related to your industry.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

10 Golden rules to survive the Global Crisis

Online Business Ideas: A Look At Various Options

Basic Operating Question (BOQ) for Empowerment

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.