Lets face it, with diminishing attention spans you do not have much time to keep a user on your website once they get there. According to Statistic Brain the average attention span of an average user is 8 seconds, that’s right folks 8 seconds. That’s shorter then the attention span of a goldfish that has a 9 second attention span. This doesn’t give you much time to make a first impression. No matter what business you’re in, the last thing you’re going to want to do is deter people from spending time on your website.

Now lets take a look at 5 things that that will cause me to leave your website almost immediately:

Slow Load Time

Want to lose me before I even make it to your website? A slow load time will do the trick. I’m not alone on this one, 40% will abandon a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load (Source: Econsultancy). Not only does this hurt your usability, but it can also affect your rank in the SERPs, as site speed is a Google ranking factor.

Autoplay Music/Video

Companies with newer websites have realized users don’t like autoplay music on websites and no longer use this website attribute. But there are still many websites you land on that will automatically start playing music or a video. Let me set the record straight, nobody likes these! If I’m busy jamming, I do not want to hear your music or video over mine. The only thing autoplay music does for your site is increase your bounce rate. If I spend more than 10 seconds on your site it’s not because I’m interested, it’s because I have too many tabs open and can’t find the one your site is in.

Ad Overdose

I will start with this I’m a marketing person and I get the importance of ads. But there needs to be a balance, and a lot of news sites are guilty of this one. A few relevant ads are understandable. However, if there are more ads then content this makes your page tacky, distracting, and going back to point one will likely slow your load time. The absolute worst types of ads are the ones that block the entire content of your page with a tiny button to close it out; if I’m on my mobile device the chances are I can’t even close the ad. Now I’m really annoyed and I’ll go find the information I was looking for elsewhere.

Sites That Aren’t Mobile Friendly

There is nothing worse then browsing the web on your mobile device and getting to a website you can’t use because it’s not mobile friendly. It’s 2015 people, hop on the mobile/responsive train! If you’re a B2B and think you can get away without a mobile site, think again. 77 percent of executives use their smartphone to research a product or service for their business. (Source: Search Engine Watch) Additionally, Google will be making “mobile-friendly” a ranking signal for your SEO, so now more than ever, mobile sites are a vital part of your online presence.

Overbearing Call-to-Actions

Leads, leads, leads. As soon as a user gets to a website they’re a lead, right? WRONG. When I get to your website give me a second to breathe, when I first get to your blog or content I do not want to subscribe to your blog or speak to a sales person. So stop with those pesky pop ups or chat boxes that follow me around. When I am ready to reach out, I will. Nurture your leads people, the only thing you will do by pushing me to give you my information is make me leave… or give you a fake email.

Now that I made it through my top five list of things that cause me to leave a website, lets go to Twitter for additional input to see what others have to say…

https://twitter.com/cattmurry/status/573601347288842240

At lastly we’ll get some input from Tim’s Pithy Party:

“Seriously. Enough. If the biggest thing on the top of your homepage is a slider, I probably hate your website more than I would have otherwise.”

Now it’s time for your input. What makes you want to leave a website? And sorry in advance for asking if you’re human!