What Offends
Site Visitors?
Online retailers spend a lot of time and
resources polishing their web sites to
please their visitors and keep them coming
back as customers, but too much
whiz-bang technology may repel rather
than attract shoppers, a new
survey from Hostway Inc. says.
In other words, keep
it simple. "The Internet
has matured to the point where consumers
demand an easy online experience," says
Kohn Lee, vice president of marketing
at web site hosting company Hostway. "Quite
simply, consumers are warning companies,
'You're going to lose my business if
your web site experience is annoying.'"
Aesthetics
Site aesthetics were important to more
than half the respondents. 59% cited moving
text as bothersome; 55% said they
were annoyed by certain colors,
type fonts and page formats.
 But the survey of 2,500 adult consumers,
conducted for Hostway by researchers at
TNS in July, found that pop-up
ads annoy the most consumers,
93%, and that several other issues also
irk high percentages of them:
- The need to install extra software
to use site features, 89%;
- Dead links 85%;
- Confusing navigation, 84%;
- Registration log-on pages that block
access to content, 83%;
- Slow-loading pages, 83%;
- Ineffective site search, 80%.
Losing the Customer
Most troubling to retailers, meanwhile,
may be the survey's findings that 74% of
consumers who encounter their pet peeves
on websites are likely to unsubscribe from
promotions and messages and 71% are likely
to view the retailer in a negative way.
And more than half, or 55%, are likely
to complain about a web site to their friends.
"In an increasingly Internet-focused
world, consumers have many choices," Lee
says. "These results clearly show
that consumers will make
a behavioral change if they encounter a
web site that annoys them.
-- Internet
Retailer, September 2005
What
Offends Site Visitors | Copywriting
Mistakes | Professional Copywriting |
Pop-Up
- Definition
According
to Wikipedia: "Pop-up ads or popups
are a form of online advertising on the
World Wide Web intended to increase web
traffic or capture email addresses.
It works when
certain web sites open a new web browser
window to display advertisements. The pop-up
window containing an advertisement is usually
generated by JavaScript, but can be generated
by other means as well.
A variation
on the pop-up window is the pop-under advertisement.
This opens a new browser window, behind
the active window. Pop-unders interrupt
the user less, but are not seen until the
desired windows are closed, making it more
difficult for the user to determine which
Web site opened them."
Definition
of a Customer: One that purchases
a commodity or service.
-- Merriam-Webster |
