5 Website Features You Should Definitely Get Rid Of

When it comes to your business website, you should only utilize features and functionalities that genuinely help visitors to easily access the information they seek and hopefully, influence them convert. In other words, you should remove anything from your website that distracts visitors, hinders user engagement and reduces website conversion rates.

That said, here is our list of 5 things you should remove from your website.

Sliders, Slideshows and Carousels

Website sliders, slideshows or carousels are animated features that enable a group of images to be displayed in succession, within a website page. The problem with sliders, slideshows and carousels is that they can slow down your website from code bloat and numerous large image files.

Parallax Scrolling

Parallax scrolling is a type of animated visual effect that wherein a background image moves at a rate of speed that is different from the foreground content (e.g. text), when a visitor scrolls up and down the web page. Keep in mind that parallax scrolling can be troublesome for persons who have a visual impairment or motion sickness.

Excessive use of animation

Have you ever noticed that some websites employ many different types of animation such as image hovers, image sliders, product carousels and scroll animations (e.g. parallax scrolling, infinite scrolling, etc.) within the same web page? Utilizing too much animation within a web page can be quite overwhelming, tiring and even frustrating, for visitors. It can also slow down website performance.

Social media links

Inevitably, most websites seem to showcase social media icons that link to their respective social media company profiles. But, studies have shown that less than 3% of website visitors ever click on these links. So, why clutter up your web pages with these, when most visitors simply do not care about them?

Hamburger Menu on Desktop

Some websites utilize the “hamburger” menu (3 horizontal lines stacked, one on top of the other) was originally designed to use on websites from mobile devices. However, there are some websites that utilize the hamburger menu even when the visitor browses from a desktop computer. Since most people by now are used to only seeing the hamburger menu when using a mobile device, you could frustrate and confuse some of your website visitors. That can result in a lower conversion rate and a higher bounce rate. Instead, it is recommended that you use a traditional navigation menu when visitors are using a desktop computer.

Why Should You Remove these 5 website Features?

Your website is your best sales and marketing tool for your business. That is why you do not want to risk reducing its effectiveness by utilizing unnecessary features that do more harm than good.