Recently, it seems like you have to actively fight the websites just to be able to start doing what you came to do.
- Accept cookies
- Manage privacy settings
- Close email pop-up
- Close chatbot
- No, don’t share my location
- No, I don’t want any notifications in the future
- Stop the autoplay video (requires 3 clicks to close)
- Now… what did I come here for?
This is beyond frustrating.
If you are slightly masochistic and you don’t have enough of this in everyday life, you can visit Websites in 2018 to see some of this in action. This is in the “so real it hurts” category.
How did it happen?
While each of the elements can be justified if singled out, as a whole it creates a big pile of mess, and you want to be done with it quickly, never to come back.
This is also what can happen if you overoptimize your website.
You can make every single element as effective as possible but somehow, when you put it all together, it’s just a disaster.
You need to keep that in mind and to optimize also for an overall satisfaction of your visitors.
It’s not as easy to measure as A/B testing the newsletter pop-up, but it’s what makes people like your website and what makes them want to come back in the future.
So before you think of the next thing to optimize or add on your website, have a look at user video sessions.
- How do they behave on your site?
- What do they need to do before they start doing what they wanted?
- At which point many of them leave?
- Are they getting frustrated? (Sometimes it’s easy to see in the recordings. Just watch for the aggressive mouse movement)
Once you know their behavior better, optimize for overall satisfaction.
You’ll still keep adding new things soon after but at least, from time to time, you’ll have a sanity check and your long-term customer satisfaction will thank you for it.
PS. Long-term satisfaction always beats one-time improvement. It’s just harder to measure so the one-time fixes usually prevail.
