7 UX mistakes that drive customers away from your site

Why does UX design decide whether people choose you?

A visitor owes you nothing. They land on your site from Google or from an ad, and within a few seconds they decide whether to stay or hit “back” and go to a competitor.

That decision rarely has to do with how beautiful the site is. It has to do with UX design, meaning how easily people find what they’re looking for and do what they came to do. Bad UX drags down your conversion rate, the percentage of visitors who become customers, and makes every ad you pay for to bring them in more expensive.

These are the seven mistakes we come across most often in website development for Greek businesses.

Mistake 1: The site is slow to load

According to Google, 53% of mobile visits are abandoned when a page takes more than three seconds to load. The visitor leaves before even seeing what you offer.

Your website speed is measured with the Core Web Vitals metrics from Google. The goal is for the main content to appear within 2.5 seconds, for the page to respond to a tap in under 200 milliseconds, and for its elements not to “jump around” while it loads.

The usual culprits are heavy images, too many plugins and cheap hosting. You can test your site for free with Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

Mistake 2: Designed for desktop, not for mobile

Many sites are designed and approved on a big desktop screen. Your customers, though, usually see them on their phones, often one-handed. And since late 2023, Google has been evaluating every site based on its mobile version (mobile-first indexing).

The signs of a site that isn’t truly mobile first: buttons so small you tap the wrong one, a menu that doesn’t open properly, text you have to zoom in to read, a phone number you can’t call with a single tap.

Design for the phone screen first and the desktop second, not the other way around.

Mistake 3: Visitors can’t tell what you do

Open your homepage and look only at what’s visible without scrolling. Can a stranger understand within five seconds what you do, who it’s for, and why they should choose you?

If all that’s there is a generic slogan, like “Innovation with passion,” over a stock photo, the answer is no. And the visitor won’t stick around to figure it out.

The main headline should say in plain words what you offer. The subheadline should say who it’s for and what they gain. The menu should have a few clear options, in the words your customers use, not internal jargon.

Mistake 4: The next step isn’t clear

Every page needs one goal: a phone call, an appointment, a purchase, a form. When visitors can’t see what to do next, they simply leave.

Your call to action (CTA) needs to stand out visually, sit where the eye looks for it, and say specifically what will happen. A “Book an appointment” or a “Get a quote in 24 hours” is far more persuasive than a generic “Learn more.”

Watch out for the opposite mistake, too: five equally weighted buttons on the same screen. When everything shouts, nothing gets heard.

Mistake 5: Forms that wear people out

Every extra field in a form is one more reason for someone to give up. In online stores, this mistake is costly: according to the Baymard Institute, about 70% of shopping carts are abandoned before purchase. The average checkout has 11.3 form fields, while 7 to 8 are enough.

The same research shows that almost one in five shoppers who abandoned a purchase did so because the site forced them to create an account. The most common reason, though, is unexpected extra costs, such as shipping.

Ask only for what you really need, offer guest checkout, and show the final cost early on.

Mistake 6: Walls of text

Visitors don’t read, they scan. According to Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group, the average user reads about 20% of the words on a page. Long paragraphs without subheadings simply get skipped.

Write for people in a hurry: short paragraphs, subheadings that get to the point, lists wherever there are steps or options, bold for the words that matter. The most important information goes first, not at the end.

The same text, properly organized, gets read more, persuades more, and Google likes it too.

Mistake 7: A site not everyone can use

According to the WebAIM Million 2026 report, 95.9% of the homepages of the one million most popular websites have accessibility errors. The most common is low-contrast text, found on 83.9% of pages.

Ensuring website accessibility is no longer just good practice. Since June 28, 2025, the European Accessibility Act (Law 4994/2022) has been in force in Greece, and it also covers e-commerce services. Only microenterprises that provide services are exempt.

Good color contrast, image descriptions (alt text), keyboard navigation and clear labels on form fields help all visitors, not just people with disabilities.

Where to start

You don’t need to rebuild your site from scratch to see a difference. Start with four simple checks:

• Speed. Run your homepage through PageSpeed Insights.
• Mobile. Make a purchase or send a contact request from your phone, from start to finish.
• Five seconds. Show your homepage to someone who doesn’t know you and ask them what you do.
• Data. Check Google Analytics to see which pages most visitors leave from.

At CNCTECH, every website we build starts with UX design and data: speed, mobile, accessibility and a clear path to conversion.