Top 11 User Pain Points & Fixes for Better Website User Experience [Updated in 2025]

Top 11 User Pain Points & Fixes for Better Website User Experience [Updated in 2025]

Nov 24, 2021 | UX Guide, User Research, UX Design | 0 comments

In this article, we’ll start by covering key principles of good website user experience before diving into the most common user pain points—and, more importantly, how to fix them.

What makes a good website user experience (best practices)?

  • User-centered Design: Put the user first. Prioritize user needs with easy navigation, clear CTAs, and a simple yet effective layout.
  • Intuitive Navigation: Users should be able to find their desired information without having to go back and forth multiple times. This can be done with clear labeling and prominent calls to action (CTAs) to help users find what they are looking for.
  • Fast Loading Speeds: Ensure the design elements of the webpages are optimised for them to load quickly, allowing users to access the content without waiting for too long.
  • Clear and Concise Content: Most website visitors are on their mobile devices, and they prefer to quickly scan through the content rather than read lengthy paragraphs to find what’s important/valuable to them. Thus, content should be easy to read and understand.
  • Responsive Web Design (RWD): With more users accessing websites on their smartphones and tablets, ensure that your website is responsive to all screen sizes and device orientations.
  • Accessibility: Accommodate for ALL users, including those with disabilities. Implement best practices like alt text for images, high-contrast colors, and keyboard-friendly navigation on your website.
    Read: The Importance of Accessibility in UX Design
  • Consistent Branding: Use the same font styles, colours, contrasts, and design elements across all pages for a unified and professional look. This enhances user trust and recognition.
  • Feedback and Interactivity: Users should be able to interact with the website and provide feedback freely. This can include features such as comment sections, contact forms, and social media integration.

Top 11 User Pain Points & Fixes for Better User Experience

1. Small-Sized Text

Video and animated content have grown in popularity, yet most online information remains text-based. Small text is a huge pain point, as readability and legibility are essential for a good user experience. Users should be able to read everything with ease.

Tips & Recommendations:
  • The body text should be at least 16 px and above, so that the text is legible at a viewing distance without needing to zoom in. Larger screens may require bigger font sizes to enhance readability.
  • The line height should be either 1.5em or 1.6em for optimal readability. The spacing helps the user to easily distinguish the lines they are reading.
  • The line length should be 50 – 75 characters per line to improve reading comfort and comprehension.
  • Always test designs on actual devices to ensure text adjusts appropriately across various screen sizes and resolutions.

2. Tiny Click Targeting

Oftentimes, websites are mainly designed for desktop use, which may not translate well to mobile devices, while human fingers are not as small as a cursor, users will struggle to tap accurately.

The smaller the interactive elements (e.g., links, buttons, and other UI controls), the larger the likelihood of making mistakes, and users have to look high and low for it. 

Tips & Recommendations:
  • Make buttons easy to find and tap. Ensure touch targets are finger-friendly to cater for mobile web design.
  • The average size for the touch target should be 9 × 9 mm. Google’s material design suggests a minimum of 48 x 48 px.
  • Add padding around each touch target and keep enough space between buttons to prevent accidental taps. Microsoft recommends 10 mm between each touch target to cater for stubby fingers.

Click Target Guide

A guideline for click target size according to the Web Accessibility Initiative.

3. Unexpected Layout Shifts

Imagine that you have found what you are looking for on a page, and you’re ready to click on to proceed. But as you click, an ad suddenly pops up and you’ve clicked on it. It redirects you to a completely different page and you’re having to find your way back again—frustrating, right?

This is an unexpected layout shift, where visual elements on a webpage move around as the page loads or as a user interacts with the content. These shifts disrupt the entire user experience, especially when they cause unintended actions like clicking on ad banners.
Unexpected Content Shifts - Pain point of user experience

An example of layout shifting unexpectedly on the webpage.

Source: Evaluating page experience for a better web | Google Search Central Blog

Tips & Recommendations:
  • Style fonts properly. Improper font styling can lead to a flash of invisible text (FOIT) or flash of unstyled text (FOUT) that may cause the layout to shift.
  • Specify dimensions/size attributes for all your images, banner ads, embeds, video elements. Doing this ensures that the browsers can allocate a suitable amount of space in the document whilst the elements are loading.
  • Use placeholders, empty containers, or skeleton screens for dynamically loaded elements.
  • Don’t insert content above existing content or shifting elements downward by adding content above them. The only exception is if it directly responds to a user action (e.g., a dropdown menu).

4. Unclear Calls to Action (CTAs) Button

Imagine browsing an online store, ready to buy, but the ‘Add to Cart’ button blends into the background, or looks like plain text instead of a clickable button. Confused, you scroll around searching for it, then you give up and leave the site—resulting in a lost sale for the business.

Unclear or poorly designed CTAs (e.g., Learn More, Download Now, Sign Up) confuse users, leading to lower engagement and conversions. If buttons lack clear labels, contrast, or visual prominence, users may struggle to take the desired action.

Tips & Recommendations:
  • Use clear, actionable text. CTAs should describe the exact action (e.g., ‘Add to Cart’ instead of a vague ‘Submit’ for purchasing).
  • Design buttons with proper padding, hover effects, and a distinct button shape to indicate interactivity.
  • Use A/B testing to experiment with different button styles, placements, and wording to determine the most effective CTA.

5. No ‘Back’ Button

According to Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design, user control and freedom is an important usability heuristic. It describes how users can mistakenly perform actions and need a clearly marked exit in order to leave the unwanted action without having to go through an extended process. 

Making it easy to undo actions provides a sense of freedom and control, the confidence to go back, and avoids feeling stuck or frustrated. A ‘Back’ button is that emergency exit. Users need to know they can leave if they don’t want to proceed further.

Tips & Recommendations:
  • Ensure every page has a clearly visible ‘Back’ button. If a ‘Back’ button isn’t feasible, consider breadcrumbs, a home button, or a clear exit path as an alternative.
  • If you’re concerned about losing data if a user clicks on the ‘Back’ button, prompt users by asking them “Are you sure you want to go back? All changes will be lost” and provide options to proceed with ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.

6. Insufficient Feedback

Feedback messages help users understand the result of their actions, whether it’s a successful submission, an error, or a system process in progress. 

Without clear feedback, users may feel lost and unsure if their action was registered, or frustrated when things don’t work as expected. A lack of feedback can lead to repeated actions, or even abandonment of a task.

Tips & Recommendations:
  • Provide instant visual cues such as animations, color changes, or button states (e.g., dimming after clicking) to indicate interaction.
  • Display success or error messages clearly. If an action fails, provide specific and helpful messages (e.g., ‘Incorrect password. Try again.’ rather than generic ‘Something went wrong.’)
  • Show users’ progress. For loading times or background processes, use spinners, progress bars, or step indicators.

7. Sign-up Walls

A sign-up wall, as you could imagine, is a compulsory requirement for users to sign up to a service before being able to use it. It completely stonewalls the user’s ability to explore the service and the website.

This pain point is a common problem that users encounter, we click on something interesting and suddenly hit a sign-up prompt:

Sign up Wall

An example of access blocked by a sign-up wall taken from Glassdoor.

The user is now unable to proceed further without having to sign up.

All software, including websites, should follow the ‘Try Before You Buy’ principle by making sign-up optional at first. Users are free to explore, test, and form opinions before committing. For example, news sites can allow limited free articles before prompting a subscription, keeping users engaged and wanting more.

Tips & Recommendations:
  • Allow users to explore freely, the sign-up feature shouldn’t block access but act as an added service for users to enhance experience. For example, by signing up they get to enjoy additional features or save their progress.
  • Use subtle reminders or soft prompts after users have engaged with the content instead of an immediate sign-up wall.
  • If your service is a premium service that requires users to pay, consider allowing users to have a free trial before committing.

8. Autoplay video WITH SOUND

Simply put, users don’t expect audio to play without consent. In fact, while users who are patient enough will find a way to mute it, many will leave the website immediately if a video autoplays with sound. In the end, the user’s time and effort are wasted to identify the sound source instead of focusing on their user journey. 

Moreover, not all users are in a situation where they can play video with sound on, such as those on public transport, as it would cause disturbance to others.

Tips & Recommendations:
  • Mute videos by default and allow users the option to unmute the video.

9. Slow Website Loading Speed

Extensively long load times can be a big turn-off and can frustrate users and make them abandon the website or, worse, move to a competitor site.

Tips & Recommendations:
  • Run a web page loading speed test to identify slow-loading pages.
  • Optimise website speed by reducing the image and video sizes, compressing files, and minimising the number of HTTP requests.
  • Use a content delivery network (CDN) that caches content closer to users’ location to improve load times.

10. Poor Navigation

Poor website navigation can lead to user confusion and abandonment. Navigation isn’t just about menus; it includes the sitemap and page structure, ensuring users can locate content easily. A disorganized sitemap and weak hierarchy make it difficult for users to understand their current location and where to go next.

Tips & Recommendations:
  • Keep primary navigation in expected location (e.g., top or side menu) and visible across all pages.
  • Group related content and structure pages logically to make browsing intuitive and reduce the number of clicks needed to reach key pages. 
  • Use card sorting techniques to understand how users naturally categorize information and design navigation. 
  • Provide a search bar to help users quickly find the content they are looking for.

11. Non-responsiveness Web Design

With smartphones and tablets being essential in daily life, websites must be optimized for all screen sizes. A non-responsive design is a website layout that does not dynamically adjust to different screen sizes and devices. 

This leads to usability issues like small text, tiny buttons, and misaligned content across devices, leading to a cluttered layout. Additionally, websites that are not optimized for different devices can discourage users from staying longer on the site and increase bounce rates.

NX RWD

An example of our website with responsive web design.

Tips & Recommendations:
  • Use responsive design techniques, such as responsive typography, layout scaling with fluid grid layouts.
  • Include a viewport meta tag in HTML to control the layout on mobile browsers, so that the viewport scales appropriately on different devices.
    Read: Viewport meta tag – HTML: HyperText Markup Language | MDN

 

While do-it-yourself fixes are tempting, addressing complex user pain points often necessitates a user-centered design approach. Partnering with a UI/UX design agency can provide the expertise needed to translate user research into effective solutions. Agencies can leverage their design thinking skills and knowledge of best practices to deliver an improved user experience that tackles the identified pain points.

 

Reach us at Netizen Experience for UX web development services.

 

What Is Guerrilla Testing and How to Use It?

What Is Guerrilla Testing and How to Use It?

Oct 29, 2021 | UX Guide | 0 comments

More often than not, new products like electronic appliances, websites and mobile apps can cause users frustration as they may be tedious to use, lack flexibility, and take attention away from their core purpose.  Today’s topic focuses on one of the techniques to mitigate such scenarios by employing guerrilla usability testing.

What is Guerrilla Testing?

In essence, guerrilla testing is a usability testing technique that involves gathering user feedback. It is accomplished by taking a product design or prototype to the public and asking random passersby for their thoughts.  Typically, guerrilla testing sessions last for only 10-15 minutes, with a small incentive given to users like a coffee, coupon or cake. Because of its simplicity, new ideas can be quickly tested at a low cost. As such, guerrilla usability testing is considered an inexpensive means of testing mobile apps, product prototypes or websites with real-life users. 

Guerrilla Testing Deliverables

For the most part, guerrilla testing deliverables are typically more qualitative than quantitative as they involve direct assessment of participants. In practice, qualitative approaches tend to query ‘why’ rather than ‘how many’ or ‘how much’.  As a result, guerrilla testing seeks to inform development and design decisions for ongoing projects to identify usability issues, rather than assess the overall usability of an existing product or interface. Thus, guerrilla testing is ideal for:

  • Getting fast baseline measures of an existing product experience.
  • Identifying crucial usability issues early in a product design lifecycle.
  • Testing hypotheses and validating assumptions during design sprints. 
  • Validating tasks that do not necessitate specific knowledge (for example, completing a signup form, or ordering a product in an e-commerce store)

Guerilla Testing vs Usability Testing

Usability testing revolves around testing how easy a particular design is to use with a specific group of representative users. In practice, it traditionally entails observing users’ reactions and behaviours to a website, app or product. The group of users attempt to complete tasks at different stages, from early development until a product’s release. It is carried out in a controlled environment, such as a lab or designated room or online 1-to-1 session.  Guerrilla testing is considered a subset of usability testing and takes a more agile approach to testing a prototype, product or website. High-level feedback is derived to find and fix potential UX issues. Guerrilla testing can also be performed at various stages in the project’s life cycle. 

Benefits of Guerrilla Testing

Guerrilla testing offers numerous advantages to product developers, such as:

  • Quick turnaround as there is no waiting around for recruiters to find people with specific qualifications or attributes. 
  • Inexpensive compared to formal testing as there are no travel costs for users.
  • It enables testers to identify any UX barriers early in the development process.
  • It is iterative and works well with an agile project approach.
  • It provides sufficient or enough insights to inform strategic design decisions. 
  • Guerrilla research is flexible and can be squeezed into nearly every timetable or deadline.
  • It can be utilized to demonstrate the value of user testing/research for stakeholders, especially for those who may struggle to acknowledge the value of usability testing.
  • It is a great way to do ad hoc user research, whether when conducting competitor analysis for similar ideas or practising moderation skills. 
  • It delivers substantial “context of use” observations. 
  • It provides a lot of “usefulness” feedback in real-life situations. 

Shortcomings of Guerrilla Testing

There are, however, some disadvantages that should also be kept in mind:

  • You may not get the right target audience.
  • It could be challenging to record feedback.
  • Sessions are short, so one could lose some of the insights that they would typically get from formal user testing.
  • It may not be really appropriate for all types of websites or mobile apps.
short discussion

Photo by Headway on Unsplash

How to Conduct Guerrilla Testing?

In contrast to recruiting a particular targeted audience to take part in testing sessions, with guerrilla testing, participants are usually approached in public locations and asked to take part. Since there is no formal recruitment or requirement for expensive research facilities, guerrilla testing sessions are fast and easy to set up and can be conducted anywhere like a coffee shop, library, park.  It is recommended to test between 6 -12 users, though this can vary depending on who and where you are testing from. Guerrilla testing sessions are typically short (10–15 minutes) and are structured around specific key research objectives.  If you plan to record the sessions, it is advisable to get participant consent. Each guerrilla testing session can be initiated with the following number of steps:

  • Approach a potential participant. 
  • Politely introduce yourself to potential participants and ask if they would like to partake in the software or product testing session.
  • If they agree, get general information about them.
  • Have them sign a consent form. 
  • Give them a few different scenarios.
  • Carefully observe their interactions.
  • Ask about their experience with the product.
  • Thank and reward them for participating.

Tips for Guerrilla Testing 

Following are some tips to help you achieve your testing objectives:

  • Carefully think about all the critical things people need to be able to achieve while using your product, and write down a shortlist of tasks. For instance, if your product is a mobile app for ordering food, you’ll want to test how people find a particular meal, order multiple meals, or add a meal to their cart.
  • After listing your tasks, prioritise them and decide what to exactly test. Then choose the top 3 tasks, and use them to create scenarios users can easily comprehend.
  • Ensure to always create an elaborate scenario based on each task. In essence, a good scenario describes a problem for participants to solve and is relatable, but does not hint to the participant how to achieve the ultimate goal.
  • Before testing scenarios with test participants, ensure to pre-test them with friends and colleagues to ensure that people can follow them without any confusion. 
  • Always be ethical and transparent.
  • Understand people’s expectations even if your design is not fully complete. For instance, use this opportunity to ask them what they might expect to see after clicking on a certain button/link in a User Interface (UI) flow 
  • Because guerrilla testing is meant to be an ad hoc technique, it does not mean it should be entirely unplanned. So, make sure you carefully plan how much time you’re going to ask of users.
  • Always stay polite and ask users if they are okay with you stealing a little more time than planned. Generally, people won’t be happy if you don’t respect their time, which may lead to biased or even unhelpful responses to your questions. 
  • Avoid always conducting your guerrilla testing in the same places or types of places. Testing at different places will help ensure that you have participants with varied demographics. 

Guerrilla Testing Questions

As we have established, guerrilla testing is a low-cost usability testing method that helps you quickly answer straightforward usability questions. That being said, guerrilla testing questions vastly differ from those employed in more structured and in-depth research methods. Principally, guerrilla testing questions are shallower in their depth of insight, and seek to be informal when engaging users. 

What should you not test?

Guerrilla testing should not be employed in specific scenarios like:

  • When domain-specific knowledge is necessary to use a product (for example, when completing specific use-cases in financial or even medical apps). In practice, you cannot expect random people to have all the required skills to deliver satisfactory technical answers.
  • When a highly specific environment is necessitated to conduct testing (for instance, when testing can be done only in a specific location).

Guerrilla Testing Example

Overall, where you conduct guerrilla tests affects how you perform and document your work. For example, if you’re testing a new mobile app for a supermarket chain, you might go to the store itself and walk down the aisles.  However, if you’re working on a “general” office software suite, you might test it with workers in a different part of an office, etc.  Overall, the idea is to let context drive your decision making. Though public spaces and shopping malls may present some of the best locations for guerrilla testing due to the sheer amount of free foot traffic they receive. Not to mention the relaxed nature of the environment, which can come in handy when approaching strangers. However, with more particular user sets, you can target subjects based on context and demographics. Furthermore, companies can perform remote guerrilla testing by exploiting public forums such as Reddit, Quora or even LinkedIn Groups, by simply writing a simple post describing the intent and the related incentive.

Takeaway

In conclusion, if you’re seeking quick feedback on your prototype or website, then guerrilla usability tests are the way to go. Guerrilla testing allows you to conduct multiple expedited field usability tests during the course of project development to gain actionable insights into where usability barriers could be. However, you have to be considerate of the occasional risk of not getting in front of the right target audience, and sessions being much shorter than with formal usability testing. This might limit your ability to get comprehensive insight.  Nonetheless, guerrilla testing gets you in front of all user types; whether it’s a prospective user, or Peter from down the road, who opens every app under the sun, apart from yours.  Overall, guerrilla testing is a great way to get your foot in the door to demonstrate the value of spending time with users before launching any final product. Reach out to us at Netizen Experience to discuss your usability testing needs.