The mistakes described in this article that are made by developers and designers are the reason for a high bounce rate. A bounce rate is calculated by how many people visit a site, against how many people click off the site, close the tab, close the window, or press back within a ten second time period. A high bounce rate means that people are looking at your site and then not looking at it (bouncing on and off again). The first four mistakes are those that web designers make. They are silly mistakes that show a lack of forethought, testing and research. The rest of the mistakes are those made by developers. The developers are the people who take an already established design/website and add things to it.
Putting the search bar in the wrong place
This is such a silly mistake to make. It is the equivalent of putting a doors key hole in the bottom right corner of a door. People expect to see a search bar near the top or on the left. If a website is clearly designed and user friendly enough then maybe a search bar can be put in a column on the right, but in most cases it is near the top or on the left. If you put it anywhere else then people will assume that there is no search bar and will probably leave the site.
Putting appearance before functionality
Flash videos, graphics that take time to load, colors and designs that hide links and draw the eye away from the menus. A website must always be functional and user friendly first. Even if this means that the design is unoriginal or dry (even stale). You must remember that nobody goes onto a website for its design. Even the social media websites that host some of the most beautiful graphics and images are actually very stale and dry if you remove the images.
Making it take too long to load
This is bad for your SEO and is the second biggest reason for a high bounce rate. A bounce rate is calculated by how many people click on your site and then click “back” or close the tab/window. The first biggest reason for a high bounce rate is auto-start videos.
Putting links too small
Links are ugly and SEO rules state that the best ones are in textual format. They are very difficult to turn into something good looking when they are in text format, so some people shrink them down so that they do not detract from the overall image and design of the websites design. This is a mistake because it makes the website very hard to navigate and read.
Having pop ups appear
This is not a good idea. When will web developers get it through their heads? If people are PAYING MONEY for pop up blockers then why do developers keep adding them into websites? People are not so stupid that they will buy a produce, service, or sign up to a newsletter, simply because it plasters all over their screen. It is a pointless distraction and wastes the time of users who are only going to close the pop up. Many people do not even get past the pop up; they will just close the tab or browser window.
Over advertising
This refers to web developers who fill web pages full of affiliate ads. It is hard to believe that the few cents they make every month is worth the massive bounce rate that over advertising provides. So many people leave a website because it is full of ads that it seems pointless in even adding any content to the site. They may as well just write “ha ha” in the middle of the page, and surround the “ha ha” with a page of adverts. They would probably get the same amount of clicks every month.
