Is Your Site Worth My Time?
Posted by Mike | Filed under Miscellaneous, TrafficI’ve been playing around with StumbleUpon for the last couple of hours and I never realized that there were a number of things which make me leave a particular site. Everyone knows that time is very important, and that wasting time will result in… uhh… let’s just say negative things. I don’t like wasting time, so I don’t stay too long on a site which I think will not benefit me. At all. My reasons? Read on.
The site takes 1,337 seconds to load. Actually, it doesn’t matter if it’s 1,337, 123, 900, or what. My point here is if your site takes more than a minute (or maybe half a minute) to load, I won’t bother waiting — regardless if you have the thing that everyone looks forward to… “great content”. I’d rather write a new blog post or do something productive than wait for your site to load. Sure, I can wait for it WHILE I’m doing my own thing, but hey, I might not be interested in what you have to offer anymore. Especially because you already pissed me off by letting me wait for like what? A couple of hours or something?
Dude, if your site is like a turtle, I don’t think anyone will be willing to wait. Why? The world is now fast-paced and (almost) everyone wants everything done in an instant. You’re losing A LOT potential customers if your site loads oh so slowly.
The site offers some for free, but not really free as in FREE. I’ve reached a lot of sites that were like this. They state that they’re giving reports for free IF I sign-up for their (crappy, actually, and unrelated to the reports) newsletters. I was like “What in the world?!” Uhh… If you’re offering something for FREE, then give it for free. Just place that darn download link on your web page! Don’t ask the people to sign-up first, nor ask them to “donate” $1 before they can get the free stuff. If you want to get something in return for your item, then don’t label it as free. Put a price tag on it!
I don’t sign-up for seemingly free offers, so don’t even bother sending me your site if you’re just going to waste my time.
The website’s design/layout looks so old. I’m not really a fan of intricate designs, but I don’t like seeing sites that look so 1997. Even if the content is great, the owners of those sites make me think that whatever stuff they have are so outdated, mainly because of their design. I mean, if they weren’t able to update their design to the latest trends, then their information MUST be out of date as well.
The website has a messy layout. Messy layouts, especially those with big glittery buttons, flashy colors and a nowhere-to-be-found navigation bar totally annoy me. Not only do they make me go “Ahh!!! It hurts my eyes!”, they also give me a hard time finding what I want on the spot. As I said, the world is moving fast these days and it is completely illogical to waste even one second. If your site blinds me (temporarily or permanently, doesn’t really matter!) or if it lets me look for the navigation bar, then I assure you that I won’t visit your site. Never again. Your site should be clean for it to look professional!
The site hasn’t been updated for a loooong time. Oftentimes, I check out sites to see if there are any updates or news. If I see that the homepage is empty (or if it just says “click here to read my article written last year”), then I assume that the owner is not actively updating the site anymore… and I don’t see any reason for me to be using around 10 minutes of my time to browse the site.
Sites that can be described by the things I stated above will probably most likely lose a significant amount of traffic. And I know you wouldn’t want that to happen to your website! Well, now that you know the reasons why I (not only me, perhaps quite a number of other people, too) don’t stay for too long on a certain website, let me ask you… Is your site worth my time? 
Leave your comments here, folks. C’mon, I won’t bite you or something! 
Yes I agree with you 100%! Especially with sites should have a clean look.
“They state that they’re giving reports for free IF I sign-up for their (crappy, actually, and unrelated to the reports) newsletters.”
Yeah and this is the common way for webmasters to build their list. For me, I will just sign up and unsubscribe/mark it as spam at any time if I don’t like their stupid newsletter
Yuhu: Thanks for stopping by man. Hope to see you ’round here more often!
Pileightlos: Yeah, and I hate those people who build lists and send me really stupid newsletters. They seriously annoy the hell out of me.
Out of the points you mentioned, the most two that annoy the hell out of me, are: no navigation bar or hard to spot one and taking too long to load!
I recommend webmasters use an online website validation tool, that does a complete check on their websites: time to load- html or xhtml validation- spam rate- double content….etc.
Might not fix all the things, but will greatly enhance the website’s performance.
Mystery,
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Mystery: Yeah, sites with no nav bars are so irritating. As in! Well, thanks for stopping by and I hope you can join my blog contest. Just check the “Latest News” tab and everything’s there.
Good article. I really liked it and I agree with all of the points. I want to say about the “giving free stuff”. Well, the marketing plan should be something like, give away free publicly without much efforts at the beginning, build the base, then give away for something in return, to those who subscribe to blogs etc, a part of marketing scheme.
And yeah, not updating the website makes the visitors run away from the site. They think that the owner doesnt care about the site himself so no use coming back to their website. If you update frequently, people visit frequenetly to see what you have written or updates. Thats how it goes
I absolutely agree with your point about “Free stuffs” which are not exactly free. I have also come across a few sites like that and immediately, the blogger’s credibility takes a nose dive in my eyes. I would call that blatant cheating or failure to understand the meaning of the word “Free”.
By the way, your website’s design is really nice. Did you get it custom-made?
pablopabla: Thanks for the compliment. I got it custom made, yes.
Yea I agree with pablopabla… nice theme Juggler!! Who’s the designer? I know it isnt blogthememachine.com.. lol.. sorry to hear you got scammed.
Yuhu: Richard Shank from Vaoko.com designed it.
The one that bugs me is sites that haven’t been updated in a year. There are a lot of really good, very high PR blogs that haven’t been touched in forever.
That vaoko.com guy sure is good. Saw his blog, his theme is nice, though the colours aren’t that nice IMO. Me no like pink, thats the reason I guess.
Good article
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