Most website owners talk about driving more traffic to their site. A recent survey by market information company Taylor Nelson Sofres illustrates that maybe we should all be a little more concerned about keeping our current visitors happy (and not doing things that annoy them).

According to the survey, the top 5 nuisances identified by the roughly 2500 survey respondents include the following (in order of most common responses):

1. Popup ads
2. Required registration before viewing site content
3. Extra software needed to view website
4. Pages that load too slowly
5. Broken links

For ecommerce websites, the penalty for annoying this surveyed group is pretty severe. 70% of respondents said they would not make purchases from sites that featured these nuisances. Perhaps the scariest part of the survey results is the statistic showing that less than 25% of respondents indicated a desire to inform the problematic website of their opinion or frustration.

So…it’s not safe to assume that since no one is complaining about your popup ads that your site’s visitors must not mind. A more likely scenario is that they’ve quietly slipped away to another less annoying website!

For advertisers reliant on popup ads (19% of revenue for online publishers surveyed by advertising.com) it’s useful to be aware of this trend toward user annoyance at popup ads as well as the increase in popup blocker software. For website owners or content managers interested in keeping existing visitors happy and attracting new long-term visitors, the survey underscores the importance of making desirable content easily accessible and ensuring that all links are working properly. Implementing a well-built content management system (CMS) can go a long way toward ensuring your site visitors aren’t voting your site as one of the web’s most annoying!

For more information:

Taylor Nelson Sofres

eMarketer Article on Survey