The internet has been around for quite a long time, and its growth is beyond expectations. With mobile devices on almost every people's hands, access to the World Wide Web has never been easier. As the internet grows, things become cluttered, untidy and overloaded. There are times when you need to take a look on how you site is before becoming one of the clutterness out there.
As more technologies are introduced, better and more stable connections are launched. Websites can be built with more sophistication and attractiveness. However, if you don't look at what technologies you use, and understand whether or not they're necessary for you, the practice can make you lose visitors.
People on the web are bombarded with more contents and more ads. With more than adequate information available on the web, the least you want is giving them unnecessary things more than they can handle.
Your potential web visitors are probably fed up with too much of them; bored with ads that are shown everywhere their eyes see, and tired of too much tracking making them want to defend themselves online more than ever.
Tech companies has introduced ways to block certain web contents. An example is ad blockers. While visitors came up happy, this technology can be a nightmare for publishers who depend on advertising in order to run their businesses.
When the internet becomes popular, more people are trying to thrive their businesses online by putting more and even more contents. Beside the never ending contents, publishers are also putting a lot of buttons and tracking codes on their pages. While there reasons for this, like for knowing how good/bad their contents are performing, and giving their visitors an ease to share what they like, too many of them is just too much.
Despite they do appeal users at some point, they can be just another of your unwanted crufts because they're not benefiting users directly. Limiting the number of them can sacrifice some of your capabilities, but in return, you can get more user satisfaction. Some of things you should consider limiting are:
- Tracking scripts which can automate marketing efforts and help ad networks.
- Social media buttons and widgets.
- Dynamic contents that aren't limited to sliders and carousels.
- Large and heavy images.
- Pages that require Flash technology to show up properly.
These crufts on your site can add more HTTP requests, adding things to download, and making your site longer to load. Occasionally, these things can even interrupt user experience and frequent browser crashes, especially on mobile devices.
For these reasons, it's not a surprise that web visitors are looking for ad blockers to block those unwanted materials, putting them all away from their sight.
Web visitors just want to see your contents, the things you really want to say to them that got them to your site in the first place. Not your ads, your promotions, your pop-up windows and others. It's essential to keep unnecessary things away.
If you do really need those tools to help your website to perform as you intended, you should at least put them to a minimum, or at least delay their visibility.
From Helpful To Intrusive
Online experience has changed alongside the introductions of new technologies. A lot of the tools are meant to help internet marketers in their marketing efforts to better aim users by making their contents more visible on both search engines and social media networks.
While most people visit your website by visiting either one of those two, how they get there don't matter much to them. What people want when they visit your site is expecting to get what they want in the first place. The combination of too much marketing materials and the rising mobile usage has somehow triggered a crisis in the modern digital advertising.
Ad blockers were once software made by third-party developers. Once they become a standard to most modern and popular browsers, most people don't need standalone ad blockers because their browsers can themselves block most obnoxious and obvious ads, while still allowing banners that are relevant. There is also technologies that can block almost any marketing done by a website by identifying codes and cookies, and blocking them to protect user privacy.
Because there is no way of telling your web visitors to use certain devices or turn off their ad blockers before visiting your site without sacrificing your professionalism, the most probable way to make your site more appealing is to make it more "hygiene".
Web Hygiene, Cleaning Those Crufts And Untidiness
Google and other advertising networks have given some good practices of web usability and page speed. It's always an advantage to follow their guidelines since they can make your website more usable, making them perform better for both human and bot visitors.
Below is a list of some basic guidelines for web hygiene:
- Limit scripts. they can so useful and helpful that many web developers are putting too much of them. Limiting their number and usage can improve performance significantly.
- Put contents first. Visitors want you contents, not your ads. Allow users to see your contents and get oriented before pitching them any offer.
- Limit ads. While there is no fix limit, any web page should show contents with ads, not ads with contents.
- Minimize distractions. With web technologies, interactivity can be done with ease. But too much is a distraction. Always limit their numbers and what they do.
- Use online tools to inspect your pages' performance. This is see how fast your pages load, how efficient they are and how crash-resistant they can be.
Cleansing your web pages from unnecessary things is necessary because the effort can make your site more useful and compelling since it can also eliminate incompetency that you may have shown beforehand. Other advantages of eliminating crufts and clutterness are: more robust website that is less vulnerable to attacks, less complex but still appealing, and save resources.