9 common website problems and how to solve them

Your website's functionality and presentation determine how long visitors

stay to explore your product or service (also referred to as session
duration), if they come back, convert, and share positive word-of-mouth
with others.

But toss in a 404 error page, a complicated user journey, slow loading
times, and mobile incompatibility—and user satisfaction will plummet.

Knowing how to identify problems quickly, troubleshoot potential solutions,

and implement preventative measures helps you win over new users, set
your business apart from the competition, and improve overall
satisfaction.

Let's dive into the most common website issues you may encounter, how
they impact users, and ways to effectively fix them:

1. High exit rates

One of the most frequent website problems businesses experience is a high

exit rate. A high exit rate can mean:

 Visitors find your website difficult to use

 The website is poorly designed
 The content isn't relevant or valuable to the target audience

These factors lead to discouraging consequences like decreasing

conversion rates, a low marketing ROI, inaccurate website data, and a poor
user experience.

Because high exit rates stem from a myriad of problems at any point in the
user journey, it's critical to identify where users are getting frustrated
and why they're leaving without converting—before trying to execute a
solution. Making too many assumptions too quickly can cost your business
time and money—and may not actually fix the problem for the user.

How to improve high exit rates:

  Employ funnel analytics: use website funnel analysis to map the
flow of website visitors, identify high-exit pages, and reroute traffic to
pages with higher conversion rates
 Monitor your website: continuously review your website's overall
performance, function, security, and usability with website
monitoring to proactively identify problem pages
 Ask for user input: ask users for feedback through questionnaires
and surveys while they’re on your website, engaging with the page
content or features
 Observe user behavior: see how users interact with your website and
identify opportunities for improvement with usability tests
using heatmaps and recordings
 Collaborate with customer support: review service tickets to gather
information about common issues that users report

Pro tip: combine quantitative and qualitative data to understand why your
exit rates are high.

Say you're using a website monitoring tool like Google Analytics, and
notice there's a high exit rate on one of your pages—but the data offers
little additional insight into the underlying issue.

One way to start troubleshooting is to deploy an exit-intent survey to get

user input and opinions as they leave the page. These qualitative responses
offer you critical insights about the user experience that may not otherwise
be visible with more data-driven tools.
 Hotjar’s exit-intent Survey captures users’ feedback just before they leave
your website, helping you understand their reasons for exiting.

2. Low search ranking

Search engine optimization (SEO) allows search engines to correctly

identify your content, resulting in a higher search engine results page
(SERP) ranking, increased web traffic, and higher-quality leads.

Poor SEO, however, can lower your SERP ranking, making it difficult for
users to find your website. For example, one study found that:

1. The #1 position on Google SERPs gets 34% of all website traffic

2. Improving your page's SERP ranking from #2 to #1 will double
website traffic
3. The #1 search result receives the same amount of user traffic as #2,
#3, #4, and #5 combined

In other words: users aren't just going to come out of nowhere. SEO is
crucial in attracting users to your website by ensuring it's visible in the top
position on the SERP.

How to troubleshoot SEO website issues:

  Maximize keywords: use tools like Semrush's keyword generator to
optimize your text in content headers, meta tags, and URLs to
improve search engine rankings and make it easy for new users to
understand what your website’s about
 Ensure your website is indexed: check if your website has been
indexed with a URL Inspection tool, as some new websites can take
up to six months to appear on SERPs
 Increase content publication: regularly publishing high-quality,
authoritative content helps you attract new users, expand organic
website traffic, build brand trust, and increase referrals

Pro tip: use Hotjar Heatmaps to monitor users’ responses to your website's
content.

Heatmaps gather data on user behavior to reveal what type of content

users interact with, what they overlook, and what they spend time on.
You can then apply these insights to improve your SEO strategy by creating
more content that aligns with what users find engaging and appealing.

Hotjar's Heatmaps tool lets you visually understand how users engage with
the content of your page, like where they scroll, hover, or click.

3. Poor web design

UX, UI, web, and graphic design work together to shape the final design of
a website. Although each field has distinct responsibilities, they each share
the end-goal of providing users with an enjoyable and intuitive experience.
A good website design needs to be functional and aesthetically
pleasing, prompting users to stick around for longer. A website's design
also determines how a user interprets a brand's credibility and is key to
generating a positive first impression.

But a bad website design causes user frustration, leading to high exit rates,
lower conversions, and decreased brand credibility.

How to improve your web design:

 Conduct user research: identify user pain points, needs, and

motivations by conducting user research through customer
interviews or focus groups
 Use high-quality images: avoid pixelated images using tools
like Canva, PhotoShop, or Kranken.io to adjust and compress images,
without losing quality
 Streamline site navigation: guide visitors through your site and
connect them to the most relevant pages by including easy-to-use
navigation bars, search functions, and calls to action (CTAs) on every
page
 Apply consistent style: choose consistent design styles, like color
schemes, fonts, and button sizes, to reduce user distraction and
curate an aesthetically pleasing experience

4. Security breaches

A breach in your website's security can cause several problems, including a

PR nightmare that could irreversibly damage your users' trust in your brand.
And don't assume that hackers only go after bigger businesses; in fact, the
opposite is often true, as smaller businesses tend to de-prioritize
website security.

An unsafe website puts users at risk of having personal information stolen

—their names, addresses, and credit card numbers could be used for
identity theft and financial fraud. Security vulnerabilities could also allow
hackers to infect user devices with malware or spam, causing device
damage and compromising privacy.

How to prevent security breaches:

  Monitor your website's security: utilize services
like Cloudflare, SiteLock, or Sucuri to continuously scan your website
for issues, identify threats, and quickly resolve breaches
 Keep your codebase up to date: regularly update all plug-ins, APIs,
and scripts to the latest versions to prevent unauthorized access
 Implement HTTPS protocol: use HTTPS (not HTTP) to ensure that
any data transferred between your site and users is encrypted. This is
especially important if your website requests personal information
from visitors, like shipping addresses, credit card numbers, or phone
numbers.
 Get an SSL certificate: an SSL certificate validates your website's
identity, enables a protected, encrypted connection to keep all user
transactions safe, and improves website location on the SERP

5. Broken pages and redirects

There is little more frustrating (and confusing) for a user than clicking on a
link or button that sends them to a 404 error page.

In addition to increasing the probability of a user abandoning your

website, Google and other search engine algorithms also penalize
websites with too many broken pages, dysfunctional links, and
redirects. This lowers your website's SERP ranking, resulting in fewer
visitors.

How to troubleshoot broken pages and redirects:

 Crawl your website: use website monitoring tools to identify broken

pages and website bugs, before too many users stumble upon them
 Continuously check for broken links: use tools like Dead Link
Checker or Google Search Console to periodically check your website
for dysfunctional links
 Optimize your 404 error pages: instead of the generic ‘page not
found’ text, offer users problem-solving information, such as links to
FAQs, similar content pages, or a website search bar
 Insert 301 redirects: if you move or delete a page, set up a 301
redirect link to a relevant, working page on your website. This ensures
users avoid 404 error pages and still land on a page relevant to their
original query.
Pro tip: use session recordings to spot users who rage-click on broken
links.

Rage clicks happen when users repeatedly click (and click and click) in a
certain area or on a specific element of your website over a short period of
time. Rage clicks typically signal user frustration with your website design,
including elements like broken links, buttons, or page navigation.

Rage clicks can be a symptom of website problems like dead links, broken
interactive elements, or faulty buttons.

6. Slow loading time

An estimated 40% of consumers leave a website if it doesn't load

within three seconds. Losing visitors as a result of slow loading time also
increases your website's bounce rate—which, similar to broken pages and
redirects, hurts your search engine rankings.

Slow loading time can also make your website appear unprofessional to
users, leading to decreased brand credibility.

How to improve website loading time:

 Test your load time: use PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix to

monitor your website's performance speed
 Reduce image size: use tools like TinyImage, Compressor.io,
or Optimole to compress the images on your site, without losing
quality
 Use a caching plug-in: plug-ins like W3 Total Cache and WP Super
Cache store a static version of your website, making it load faster for
recurring users
 Use external files: compress critical CSS, HTML, and Javascript
documents by setting up CSS and JavaScript in external files
  Use system fonts: avoid custom web fonts, which take up significant
space on your website. Instead choose system fonts like Arial,
Verdana, and Helvetica.

7. Lack of contact information

Clearly detailing contact information on your website legitimizes your

business and builds brand trust by providing a transparent way for users
to contact you with questions or feedback.

While larger monolith businesses like Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft are
notoriously bad at providing a direct route to human contact, small- and
medium-sized businesses may lose important leads by not making it clear
how to get in touch.

How to make contact information more accessible:

 Set up a contact page: create an easy-to-find page on your website

that includes a contact form, your business phone number, and an
email address
 Integrate a live chat: increase user convenience by offering answers
to their questions in real-time with software tools
like Intercom, Hubspot, and LiveChat, without them needing to wait
on the phone or send an email
 Include social media links: link your social media accounts to your
website to further legitimize your business and offer additional routes
for users to connect with you

8. Mobile incompatibility

Figures show that in 2023, there are about 6.9 billion smartphone users
worldwide, meaning 86% of the world’s population owns a smartphone.
Additionally, experts believe that 72% of all internet users will be
accessing web pages via a smartphone by 2025, meaning that a
significant amount of your website traffic will be coming via mobile devices
—either now or in the future.

That’s why you need to ensure your website works as smoothly on mobile
as it does on desktop. In addition to being unfriendly to users, mobile
incompatibility can lead to higher bounce rates, slow loading times, and
low search rankings.

Imagine you're a UI designer for a product experience insights platform.

Recently, the user research team finds that customers are having difficulty
using the mobile version of your company's website, so you're now working
with the UX and devs team to rework the website's format, layout, and
visual aesthetics.

But how can you test your new design on all the different types of phones,
while still ensuring it’s mobile-friendly on laptops, desktops, and tablets?

How to ensure your site is mobile-friendly:

 Use responsive website design: apply a responsive design

framework when building and updating your site to ensure it adapts
to any screen size or format from the start. Then, double-check your
website's responsiveness with tools like Test Sigma, Lambda Test,
or Responsinator.
 Test mobile friendliness: use tools like Google's Mobile-Friendly
Test or Bing's Mobile Friendliness Test Tool to identify mobile
incompatibility issues and troubleshoot solutions
 Review touchscreen navigation: review your website's UI design to
ensure tap targets like buttons and links are large enough for users to
find and easily click with their fingers
A responsive website design test with Responsinator shows how the Hotjar
website appears across multiple device types and displays.

9. Clunky sign-up processes

Even a couple of extra steps in a registration form can quickly turn users
away from your site. In fact, studies find that more than 85% of users feel
bothered when they have to create a new account on a website. Those
who do may go on to sign up forget their login credentials or fail to
validate their email address. Adding social sign-up options on your website
eliminates this issue.

How to optimize the sign-up process:

 Watch recordings: review user recordings first to confirm users are

struggling with the sign-up process—and then to pinpoint the
specific step causing difficulty
 Use a social media plug-in: add your website host's social media
login plug-in for popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, or
Google
 Use customer identity solution integrations: use social APIs
like LoginRadius, OneLogin, and OneAll Social Login to integrate your
 website log-in with over 30 social networks and customize the user
log-in journey

Pro tip: if it's still unclear why users aren't signing up, get in touch with
them directly by conducting user interviews.

Hotjar Engage helps you target and recruit the right users to quickly gain
critical insights about what's working with your service or product,
what's not, and ways to troubleshoot.

Hotjar Engage lets you talk to people who accurately reflect your target
demographic.

Prioritize users when evaluating website problems

Identifying and fixing website problems can feel overwhelming, especially
with the vast array of tools and solutions available. But it’s a manageable
and effective process, as long as you continuously prioritize what really
matters: the user.

By keeping users at the center of your decision process, you ensure your
website meets their needs and delivers a positive experience. This, in
turn, drives engagement, loyalty, word-of-mouth, and conversions, allowing
your business to grow and stay competitive.