User experience (UX) plays a huge role in determining how effective your website is at converting visitors into customers. If your website doesn't offer a smooth, engaging experience, users will likely abandon it and head elsewhere. Every small frustration—from slow loading times to cluttered design—adds up, pushing visitors away from your brand. The good news is, these issues are fixable. In this post, we’ll explore some of the most common UX mistakes that might be hurting your conversion rate and show you how to resolve them.
Table of Contents:
Slow Loading Times
Confusing Navigation
Poor Mobile Responsiveness
Inconsistent Design Elements
Overwhelming or Cluttered Interface
Lack of Clear CTA's
Ignoring User Feedback
Inadequate Content Structure
Overcomplicated Forms
Ignoring Accessibility
Your website is often the first interaction customers have with your brand. A well-crafted user experience makes it easy for visitors to find what they need, engage with your content, and take the desired actions—whether that’s making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or contacting your team. On the other hand, poor UX can frustrate visitors and send them straight to a competitor's site. To ensure you're maximizing every opportunity, it's essential to prioritize the user experience and avoid common pitfalls that can hurt your conversion rate. Check out these common user experience mistakes that can hurt your conversion rate and how you can fix them to get your website back in great shape.
The average website takes around 2.5 seconds to load on desktop devices and around 8.6 seconds on mobile devices. If your load time is well beyond that, chances are, customers are clicking away without giving it a chance to finish. Slow load times throughout the website also quickly become frustrating.
The Fix: Check your load times across multiple devices. Remove unnecessary elements, including excessive graphics and videos, if they are slow or lagging. This can be a hard task for designers but ultimately user experience trumps your design dreams.
When users can't figure out how to get to what they're looking for on your website, they're less likely to stay on the website. They need clear, easy-to-follow navigation that makes it possible for them to figure out what they're looking for. If we were to pick a user experience mistake that held us captive at HIVE, it would be the navigation. We brought into the hype that mega-navigations were in, but we were so wrong.
The Fix: Pay particular attention to the areas of your website that customers are most likely to visit, whether that's the contact page or an FAQ page, and make sure that your navigation is clear and simple to improve user experience.
Another common user experience mistake is poor mobile responsiveness. A high percentage of your customers are now accessing the internet via mobile devices. Mobile traffic makes up more traffic than computer traffic. That means that if your website isn't mobile responsive, it could interfere with customers' ability to make purchases. Now this common mistake does vary by industry so if your research shows that less than 10% of your traffic visits from a mobile device, you can skip to the next issue but if not....
The Fix: Ensure that your website is responsive across mobile devices and that it displays the way you want it to on different screen sizes.
When customers interact with your business, they want to know what to expect. That means clear branding, from using a predictable color scheme to ensuring the website looks the same no matter what page they're on. Now, this usually is a mistake that organizations addicted to rebrands find themselves guilty of.
The Fix: Create a brand playbook that lays out your signature colors, fonts, and graphics, and make sure each page of your website fits those requirements. We recommend an annual website comb through as a best practice anyway.
Your interface is also important in improving user experience. It seems like a no-brainer that you'd want to make it easy for customers to access the information they're looking for on your website. However, on the flip side of that, you also don't want to overwhelm them.
The Fix: Take a look at your interface. If it's cluttered or contains excessive information, it's time to pare it down and ensure that it's as easy for customers to use as possible.
What is it that you want your customers to do as they interact with your website? Whether your goal is to have them provide contact information or make a purchase, you want to ensure that you have clear calls to action that guide them to those steps.
The Fix: Have a clear goal in mind for each page of your website and make sure that it guides your customers.
Your users will let you know how they feel about your website. Whether it's direct feedback in the form of compliments and complaints or indirect comments and clicks away from your website, make sure you're listening to what your users are saying.
The Fix: You don't have to modify your website every time a customer mentions something about it. However, if you're regularly getting the same feedback, make sure you incorporate it into future design plans or modifications.
User experience also involves your content structure. Content is still key when you're trying to impress your customers. Well-organized content not only helps with search engine optimization (SEO) but also ensures that visitors can easily find and digest the information they need. Imagine landing on a website where the information is scattered, paragraphs are long and unbroken, and headings are either non-existent or misleading. It creates a frustrating experience that may drive users away.
The Fix: Not only should you provide information that will maximize your search engine ranking, but you should also have content that adds genuine value to your users. If you have short-form content, look for ways to extend it. This way, you're offering more to your customers than your competitors.
Collecting information from your clients is essential for many reasons, whether you're trying to build an email list or reaching out to them to offer an estimate. However, if those forms are excessively complicated, customers will click away from your website without filling them out.
The Fix: Keep forms simple and ensure you're only collecting the information you need.
Disabled users need to be able to access your website, too.
The Fix: Be sure to offer text alternatives, make your content easy to see and hear, and provide captions and other accessibility tools where necessary. Furthermore, make sure that customers have time to engage with the content — no pop-ups or fast-moving carousels that make it hard for them to keep up.
Improving your website’s user experience is one of the most impactful ways to boost your conversion rate. By addressing these common UX mistakes—whether it’s streamlining navigation, optimizing for mobile, or making your site more accessible—you can enhance the overall customer experience and keep visitors engaged.
A well-designed, user-friendly website is more than just a necessity—it’s a competitive advantage. If you’re ready to take your website to the next level, HIVE Strategy can help. Our website development team specializes in creating optimized, high-converting websites that align with your business goals. Learn more about how you can improve on your company's user experience with our AI Marketing Grader.