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Since creating a website that is "user friendly" is often difficult and time consuming, I thought it would be fun to explore a few ways to create a dissatisfying user experience on your website. Unlike the dozens upon dozens of things that go into creating a website that provides a positive visitor experience, one that creates an atmosphere of trust and is likely to improve conversion rates, creating a dissatisfying experience can be done fairly easily in just a few steps.

In fact, while I'm sure there are just as many things that can derail a visitor on a website, there is no need to implement more than a few. We have found that any <em>one</em> of the four things listed below will do the trick!

Not able to find specific information

Visitors come to your site for a reason. Maybe they are researching a topic, seeking to gain information, or are comparing differences between your offerings and a competitor’s. In any case, your visitors are often searching for something specific, and maybe they even want to take action once they have the vital pieces of information they seek. Maybe that information is product specifications, pricing info, or perhaps just a phone or email address. Do what you can to hide this important information. Be sure to provide only basic, general information about your topic, product or services and avoid any decision clinching specifics.

If you feel you absolutely must provide more information, make sure that it is buried in the midst of a lot of text or that any links to this information is difficult to find. Nothing says we hate you like hiding important details or contact information!

Confusing website

People are easily confused, which makes this an easy task to accomplish. Don't waste much energy thinking about things such as layout, design or navigational consistency. When developing your content, speak in broad vague terms and use as much industry technobabble as possible. Don't worry about website architecture either, that's just a huge time-consuming task that ultimately prevents your visitors from having to do any real work to get the information they need. If you make it all too easy, then your visitors won't feel that your information is valuable.

Slow website

If you happen to have a lightning fast server you might want to find a new one. You're probably paying too much for hosting anyway. But if switching hosts is too much of a problem, and then see what you can do to slow it down. You can do this quite easily by using poorly implemented code, excessive code bloat or extremely large images. Add lots of flashy tools and multimedia that must be used such as flash based websites that have to download the full file first.

Since many metrics services look at time spent on a website as an indicator of a site's overall value, the more you slow things down the better things look. Slow sites mean visitors must remain on the site longer just to get the information they need. This can be a boon to advertising.

Broken Links

Nothing tells your visitors that you care than handfuls of broken links on your site. I suggest you change URLs frequently and that you don't perform monthly broken link checks. This is actually entertaining to your visitors because broken links create something of a game. And who doesn't love a good game of hide and seek, right?

There you have it, four quick and easy ways to dissatisfy your customers. The great thing about these is that you don't have to think to hard about any of them. In fact, they require hardly any thought at all. When I think about how best to go about creating this kind of unusable environment two words come to mind, random and haphazard. Not only are those both fun words, but they make for a fun website.