What if someone came to you and said, "I've designed this great website, but people don't stay on it. Why?" How would you respond? Would you ask them whether they have done extensive A/B testing? Would you recommend testing the usability of the website?

People like to test a number of metrics to see why people are not staying on a website. Sometimes we spend so much time focusing on analytics that we throw common sense out the window. Analytics are a powerful tool for improving a website, but often the problem is right in front of your face.

What if you simply told them that the reason people are leaving is because of the way they designed the website? Doesn't that change your entire perspective on the design? It could be the greatest thing in the world, but what if you really designed something to chase people away or looking at it another way: What if you have designed it so there is no incentive to stay?

Feedback

Some people love getting feedback on the stuff that they write; yet their website has no comments section. Is it reasonable for them to wonder why people don't leave feedback? They could tell people that there is a forum on the website where they can leave feedback, but that means they would have to register, get approved and then remember what they wanted to write. The website isn't designed for instant feedback.

The point is that, if you expect a person to take an action, you would have to design the process for taking that action right into the website itself. You should never assume that a person who is interacting with your website will automatically take that action. Would a driver stop at an intersection that had no stop sign?

As designers we have to understand that the interface we create dictates the action of the people using it.

If you run a website and hope to get a lot of comments, then the best way to go about that is to make posting a comment as easy as possible. Of course, doing so could lead to people leaving all types of comments, both useful and not. A great example of designing how you want users to interact with a product is Pinterest.

Maybe It's Not That Simple

Simply saying that a product was designed to do what it is meant to do makes fixing problems seem like the easiest thing in the world. Of course, as you dig deeper into how to improve a design, you will have more variables to keep in mind; but always be aware of the simple fact that people will do what the design of a website lets them do.

Why did Twitter evolve beyond being a place where people just leave status updates? Part of it has to do with the tiny microcopy that was above the status update field. Originally it said "What are you doing?" and this of course led to people talking about their breakfast. After some time they changed it to "What's happening?" which helped guide the people using the service to post about what is happening around them.

Do you want your users to do something specific? Then design your website so that they do it. To accomplish that you can come to Disual and we will design your web site upon your requests.