Getting traffic on your website is one of the hardest things. You read lots of stories on hacker news on what X website did to get a massive amount of visitors in a short timespan. Almost always each articles use different strategies, so it is hard to pinpoint what makes them successful. I don't get much traffic and I do try to follow these advices. However if you ask me how to drive people away, I can definitely help you with that.
Destruction leads to a very rough road, But it also breeds creation.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
There are simple things that you can do to annoy your users. I share it because sometimes developers focus so much on technology and they add useless features just because they can.
Disable right-click
Every time this happens to me, I first blame the mouse. I start right clicking multiple times, lift the mouse to see if the laser is on, shake it, open another application to see if the right click works there. I do all this because I do not want to believe that someone thought it was cool to disable the mouse button.
Sometimes I just want to right click on a link and open in a new tab, but it wouldn't let me. This mostly happens on websites that get very low traffic but the owners are very protective of their work. They don't want anyone to copy it. Usually when I see this, I copy all their content and save it on my hard drive... just because I can.
Yellow text on red background
reading just one line is fine, but try to read a full page in this color.
He oppose at thrown desire of no. Announcing impression unaffected day his are unreserved indulgence. Him hard find read are you sang. Parlors visited noisier how explain pleased his see suppose. Do ashamed assured on related offense at equally totally. Use mile her whom they its. Kept hold an want as he bred of. Was dash-wood landlord cheerful husbands two. Estate why theirs indeed him polite old settle though she. In as at regard easily narrow roused adieus.
Text generated by http://randomtextgenerator.com/
Use DIVs for tabular data (drive developers away)
When creating a table, use < table >
Horizontal scrolling.
Horizontal scrolling looks really cool. But when I use the mouse-wheel to scroll down and it goes right or left instead I am very confused.
Infinite scroll.
I love using infinite scroll, I never have to click on these horrible pagination buttons. But there comes the time where I actually want to find the footer links (about us and such). You can never get to it; as soon as you see it, it is pushed down with more content.
Another issue is that is when i scrolled 20 times and then clicked on a link. Now I press the back button and I have to start from all the way on the top.
Do you really want to leave?
The only reason someone will click the back button is if they want to leave. Make sure you add a few pop ups when the users try to leave. Make them sign a few forms before they can leave.
Use Splash intro
When I visit a website, I expect to be entertained. A good long un-skippable splash intro that do not tell me anything about the website is exactly what I need.
Note: Studies shows that every person that downloaded a movie illegally has watched at least one DVD with un-skippable previews [1]
SEO first, creative content never.
Before I start reading anything on a website, I check the source code first and see how SEO friendly it is. If i see table layout, I leave immediately. Asynchronous JavaScript is what makes me stay.
This is all I have for today. If you have better ideas on how to drive people away feel free to add it on the comments section.
Note [1]: I assume.
Update:
There has been a lot of comments on hackernews, including some that point out interesting stuff on my own blog :D . Here is the link.
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