The thing I see the most is extreme verbosity. People love to hear themselves talk and that translates to websites too. I've had the conversation countless times about users not reading things and the site owner arguing that they will because what they have to say is important or special. I just shake my head when they won't listen to data or experience. Even when I point out their own user behavior, they still cling to the thought that someone will read every word on their website.
No one will. A wall of text is a conversion killer. People see a mass of words, their eyes glaze over, and they lose interest.
When you're in UX you know all these obscure facts about color, type, white space—and in this case, choices. Hick's law is something nearly every UX professional knows: too many choices, users don't pick any.
When we built our house, our builder sent my wife and me three websites for front doors. Thousands of options. What happened? She couldn't choose. It was too overwhelming—she couldn't even look. I picked six, then she could choose from those.
That behavior translates online. Too many options in a product catalog, a form, navigation paths—it doesn't matter. Past a certain threshold, more is detrimental. Handhold your customer to products instead of giving them the entire catalog and expecting them to figure it out.
Everyone loves to hype their product. How amazing it is, how it'll make your life better, improve whatever. But the obvious thing gets missed: the simple call to action. What do you want the user to do?
So many times I've seen this lost or buried. I always have to stop the owner or PM and ask: what do you want the user to do? Every page needs a purpose. Click a button to buy, read an article, download a file—every action needs to be explicitly spelled out in plain wording. No trickery, no clever-sounding lingo.
And it needs to be obvious. Design has visual hierarchy, and if your CTA gets lost in the mix, it's essentially a dead end. Users will move on—or worse, to a competitor.
Humans love building complex things. What's funny is we actually hate using complex things in their raw form. A car is an extremely complex piece of machinery. If we had to understand everything about how it works, no one would drive. But a car is so simple to use a teenager can do it.
Same with the internet. Networking, APIs, databases, backend—users don't care. Engineers do. Users want simple. Dead simple.
Too many times I've seen 1999-style wizards that are multi-step for no reason. I've asked clients: why are you collecting this field, that field, and four others on this page? What are you going to do with that data?
The answer: I don't know.
So get rid of it. If you have no critical need for that data and it increases friction, remove it. Streamline it. Easier for users means higher conversions.
SURPRISE!
Bet you didn't love that. Users typically hate surprises.
"Congratulations! You are the 1,000,000th visitor and you've just received a 2% discount! CLICK HERE to claim."
Or this: You find the perfect product. It's within budget, it's in stock. You add it to your cart, go to check out—and BAM. $4.99 handling fee. $13.49 processing fee. $32.87 shipping. That $19.99 item just ballooned into something ridiculous.
Users hate this. Whether it's a modal disguised as a deal or hidden fees late in checkout, you're creating cart abandonment and a customer who now views your company negatively. Congratulations, you've lost them for good.
"So, what's in it for me?"
Your visitors have thought that. When sites talk jargon and salesy nonsense, it doesn't help. Clear benefit and value above the fold—the first thing they see—eliminates that question.
Users don't initially care how cool your company is. They want to know: how does your product solve my problem? How does it make my life easier?
If your product isn't an impulse buy, you better have this messaging buttoned up. If users can't figure out how your product fits into their life, they won't proceed. Make it clear how you're benefiting them, and that converts.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard "everyone is my audience," I'd be able to buy dinner.
I had a discussion with a FinTech founder about who his target audience was. The answer: everyone. When we dug into it, I explained how a person fresh out of high school has almost zero financial knowledge, while a person about to retire who was an accountant has an enormous amount. Both can use the product, but both cannot be talked to the same way.
Catering to an uneducated user would turn off a highly skilled one, and vice versa. You need to understand who you're targeting and match your content, design, and actions to that audience.
Yes, you can serve both beginners and pros—but that requires real UX skill. A generic one-size-fits-all approach will hurt more than help. If you don't know how or can't afford UX help, optimize for your true target. Don't go for "everyone." That never ends well.
Depending on your audience and product, you'll need to optimize for different devices. Phone app or game? Obvious. Generic real-world product? Not so obvious.
By default, traffic splits roughly 50/50 desktop/mobile. Those numbers shift based on your audience, your product, where it's used. Without knowing your specific data, make sure your site works well on both desktop and phone. Catering to one while ignoring the other is a recipe for lost conversions.
Can you live with 50% of potential customers abandoning your site because it doesn't work on their device?
You made a snap judgment about my site in under one second. Users make initial judgments about trustworthiness, security, modernity—all within a second of seeing your site.
It takes 50 milliseconds. That's 0.05 seconds. If your site looks dated, cluttered, or ugly, users notice and decide that fast.
Design matters. Before anything else I've written about can even have an effect, users need a good initial reaction just to stay. Whatever style you choose, make sure it appeals to your audience.
There's more than this. Over the years I've seen these issues come up repeatedly. Improving sites and making them better for customers is always a win-win. Investing in good design is essential. Investing in good UX is critical.
I know what it's like to walk into a project with zero design and zero UX. It's a disaster. But I know how to fix it—I've done it over and over for decades.
Want to know what needs optimizing on your site? Hit me up.