“In the world of Internet Customer Service, it’s important to remember your competitor is only one mouse click away.” – Doug Warner
Most companies strive to make the ‘face’ of their business – their website – as appealing and attractive as possible. A lot of investment in terms of time and money goes into putting together a website that will draw potential customers and keep them there long enough to lead to a business transaction. However, there is a ‘visit’ and then customers leave your business website without any ‘activity’ such as placing an order or even taking a look at the services your company offers. This is perplexing and a matter of concern for any business – irrespective of size and industry. There are several reasons why customers leave your business website and by understanding these reasons, your company could put together measures to increase sales through the website. We recommend that you start by visiting your website and navigate through it to understand exactly what the customers experience and amend the portions that could prove to be an issue.
One of the top reasons cited, could also be the reason for why customers leave your business website – a dull and boring website. The overall design, look, and ‘feel’ of your website could be unprofessional and complicated to use. Despite great content and graphics, your business website could still not be popular with ‘visitors’ because of the impression it creates. Broken links and unnecessary applications on the website accelerate exit and make customers leave your business website without any transaction. Ensure that your website has extremely user-friendly interface, enhance user experience, and portrays the essence of your company. The website must ‘work’ efficiently from anywhere and when accessed from any kind of device. This would be perfectly suited for all kinds of customers, especially the always on-the-go ones.
If you give ‘visitors’ and potential customers reason to doubt you, they will. Another reason why customers leave your business website, is because there are no ‘pages’ dedicated to letting them know exactly ‘who’ the company is, the terms and conditions for doing business, a refund and return policy and other such critical to business information. Without this information, the first impression that potential customers get of the company is that it is not trustworthy and is probably a fraud site. With such a first impression, it is highly unlikely that your website would be able to hold the attention of people visiting it and would lead to a drop in conversions and therefore sales.
The reason for a website is to get more customers and visitors could convert if they knew how to contact your company. If the contact details of your company are unclear, not updated or absent, you can be sure that customers leave your business website without a second thought. This often happens despite their interest in the products or services of your company – but they do not have the time or interest to invest in searching for details that should be present and clear on the website. They would move on to the next company that offers similar products or services. Ensure that your website has complete, accurate, and easy to locate contact details of your company – include phone numbers, company address (all locations), email address and any other information that could enable them to connect with you easily.
As a customer, would you stay on a company website that was rife with errors? All the time and investment your company put in to building a ‘great’ website would be in vain if there are mistakes. It would be obvious that customers leave your business website if there are spelling errors, grammatical mistakes and any other such blunders. Ensure that you have a professional person in charge of your website to keep it free from errors at all times.
When customers visit your website, they do so because they would like to know more about what you have to offer. Too many advertisements, flashy banners and other such ‘distractions’ could put them off and make customers leave your business website. Worse still, they could go to a competitor website instead and end up giving them their business. While some amount of advertising makes a page interesting and alive, having too many could overwhelm the customer and they would hurry out, never to return.
The term customer encompasses ‘choice’. So let them choose if they want to hear the sounds and play the videos you have on your website. Do not be surprised if customers leave your business website if it has the auto sound and play video mode. This is often irritating and distracting for many customers – a true incident as an example: A friend was browsing some websites, searching for a service. Her infant son was sleeping beside her peacefully. She clicked on a website that ‘seemed’ interesting, but to her dismay a video with loud music and sounds blared from the site. The sound not only took her by shock, it also woke the sleeping infant, who obviously began to cry. My friend has since, never visited the site again. Give customers the control and choice to view the videos when and if they want – if you force your expressions on them, you can be certain that they would leave your website without hesitation.
Some websites load in a matter of seconds, while others take so much time to load that you could make yourself a cup of tea in that time! Customers leave your business website if it takes too long to ‘reveal’ itself. Customers hate to wait and if your website keeps them hanging, especially when they are in a hurry (which is most of the time), you could seriously ruin your chances of gaining any business from them. It would be prudent to invest in the tools and methods to optimize your website and speed up the loading time, for any device. The average time that customers usually ‘stick around’ while a website loads ranges between 5-10 seconds – find out the time your website takes to load and put in measures to enhance it.
The reason someone visits a company website is to gain information about the products and services the company has to offer. If the website claims that the company has a ‘range of products’ but there is no information about these products, you can be sure that customers leave your business website for another. Why would they stay on when the purpose of their visit is defeated? A website that is rich in creativity and appears innovative may get people to ‘enter’ it but in order for them, to stay on the website should be rich in information they can use. Absence of crucial information is a sure shot method of driving traffic away from your website and possibly straight to your competitors.
Most companies make it easy for people to ‘enter’ their website, but exiting is a nightmare. Customers prefer doing business with a company that makes things easy for them and hate to waste time on complex paying methods and complicated exits. A tough to negotiate and complex check out process is irritating for customers and they would much rather leave your website than go through all the trouble. Ensure that the payment processes and checkout are easy and uncomplicated, such that this last impression makes customers want to come back to your site.
Of course, things like glaring colour combinations, too many pop ups and other such features add to hasten a customer’s exit from your business website – keep these in check. These are just some of the reasons why customers leave your business website without any transaction – visit your website to find out what else could be bothering them.
