7 features that website creators love and customers hate – How to build a website people actually enjoy using
When you build a website, your goal is usually to make it engaging, memorable, and effective at reaching your business objectives—whether that’s to create an online store, promote a service, or simply share valuable information. But there’s a gap between what website creators think is useful and what customers actually want.
Think about it: you probably visit several websites every day. In an ideal world, you’d click in, find exactly what you’re looking for, and leave satisfied. But in reality, it often turns into a mini obstacle course. First, you have to decline non-essential cookies, close the support chat bubble, stop that auto-playing video, click away the “subscribe to our newsletter” pop-up, refuse location sharing and push notifications… and only then try to remember what you came for in the first place.
It’s easy to feel like site owners are inventing new ways to annoy you. And then one day, you decide to create a website for your own business. Suddenly, you see things differently. Auto-playing videos now seem like a clever way to deliver content, email pop-ups feel like a valuable marketing tool, and before you know it, you’ve added the same features that once irritated you.
The challenge is that your customers may not share your enthusiasm. To them, these features can be distractions or barriers to completing their goals. The key is finding a balance—keeping your site functional and effective without making visitors want to leave.
Below, we’ll look at seven common features that often frustrate customers, explain why website creators love them, why users hate them, and what you should do instead.
1. Forced (or heavily encouraged) registration in online stores
This happens when shoppers can’t complete a purchase without creating an account, or when the “checkout as guest” option is so well hidden it might as well not exist.
Why website creators like it:
If you’ve learned to build a website or create an online store, you’ll know the appeal of customer registration. It provides valuable data for marketing, enables personalised communication, and speeds up checkout for returning customers. From a business point of view, it’s a tool to increase repeat sales and build loyalty.
Why customers hate it:
The numbers are revealing—only about 28% of customers make a repeat purchase, meaning most won’t benefit from having an account. For them, registering is just an unnecessary hurdle. They might not remember their password next time, and the extra steps can be enough to make them abandon their cart.
What you should do:
Always offer guest checkout as the default. Encourage account creation by highlighting its benefits, but don’t make it mandatory. If you use the Mozello ecommerce website builder, for example, customers can save their information locally without creating an account, making repeat purchases quick and painless.
2. Carousel banners
These rotating image sliders are a popular homepage feature, showing multiple messages or promotions in one space.
Why website creators like it:
Carousels feel like a neat way to showcase a variety of offers, values, or products without stretching the page. The motion adds energy, and when you’re excited to create a website, it’s tempting to pack in as much as possible.
Why customers hate it:
Most people scroll quickly and ignore sliders entirely. Worse, the image can change mid-reading, causing frustration. Few customers will sit and click through every slide, so the extra content often goes unseen.
What you should do:
Opt for one strong, static hero image with a clear call-to-action. If you must use multiple visuals, consider stacking them vertically so users can scroll at their own pace.
3. Minimum order price
Some e-commerce sites won’t let you check out unless your basket meets a certain value.
Why website creators/store owners like it:
A minimum order price allows businesses to sift out unprofitable sales. To illustrate, if you order $3 earrings, the business has to process the order, wrap them, prepare them for delivery, send them out, and offer tracking throughout the entire process – all of these steps are expenses for the business and they might not make any profit for orders under a certain limit. By setting a minimum order price, businesses ensure that they don't lose money (or – lose less).
Why customers hate it:
It sends a subtle message: “small purchases aren’t welcome here.” If someone only needs one item, forcing them to buy more feels pushy and can put them off for good. They may also discourage others from shopping with you.
What you should do:
If you can, you should avoid order minimums. Think of low-value purchases as an investment in brand recognition and customer satisfaction. Another option is to add a small additional cost, such as a delivery surcharge or packaging cost, so that your customers reach the minimum value to complete the purchase.
4. Videos that auto-play
Though it's not very common, some websites start automatically playing a video or audio when a user visits the page. The videos can be advertisements, product-related content, or some company news.
Why website creators like it:
The average time spent on a webpage is 52 seconds. People typically avoid playing videos and quickly skim through the page, as they just want to find what they're looking for. By auto-playing videos, website creators can attract attention and get more people to watch company content. As a result, people spend more time on the website and learn more about the company and its products.
Why customers hate it:
Nobody likes to be surprised by a loud video. It can cause anger, stress, and other negative emotions, which will instantly be associated with the brand that caused them. Even if the video is silent – the customer is unlikely to have either the time or will to watch it, so they have to spend time and energy to pause the video. Plus, video uses more data, which can be an annoyance for people using roaming services abroad, as it can take a long time to load and incur additional roaming costs.
What you should do:
It's almost never a good idea to use auto-play. If you have a video on your website, let the visitor play it themselves, if they want to.
5. Flashing design elements
On some websites, you'll find flashing buttons, images, and other elements that are intended to help attract attention to a particular item.
Why website creators like it:
Flashing buttons is regarded as a bad practice among more experienced designers, however, beginners sometimes think it's a good idea. If you’re new to design, flashing elements might seem like an easy way to draw the eye to key areas when you create a website.
Why customers hate it:
It looks desperate and unprofessional. Flashing elements put extra strain on the customer and make it more difficult – not easier – to absorb information. On top of that, it's a matter of accessibility. Certain over-the-top flashing content can cause seizures in susceptible people and, because of this, is discouraged and even forbidden by the Web Content Accessibility guidelines.
What you should do:
Use colour, size, and whitespace to direct attention instead. Clean, accessible design will always outperform flashing gimmicks.
6. Banners and pop-ups
Various banners and pop-ups are commonly used across websites. One of the most common types of pop-ups is for email sign-up, intended to help the website owner gather contacts for marketing purposes.
Why website creators like it:
Banners are useful for conveying important information. Creators like to remind users of upcoming events or ongoing sales and they believe taking up a part of the screen is a worthwhile tradeoff to attract attention to something important. Pop-ups, on the other hand, are usually used to get visitors to leave their email and other information, which can later be used to send sales emails and offers directly to a potential customer. They’re effective for driving sign-ups or promoting sales. A website builder makes it easy to add them, so they’re often seen as quick wins.
Why customers hate it:
A Sumo study found that the average conversion rate for an email pop-up was 3.09%. That means that out of 100 people who see that pop-up, only 3 leave their email. In other words – for 97 people, it's an annoyance and an extra thing you have to close on the website. Banners, on the other hand, are disliked because they take up valuable screen space – they crowd the screen and make it less convenient to browse the website.
What you should do:
Use banners and pop-ups scarcely. They may bring some benefits to your business, but there's a fine line between being a minor inconvenience and a deal-breaking annoyance. Try to integrate information into your website content and, if you do use a banner or pop-up, always make it easy to close. Mozello's Engaga integration allows website builders to create good-looking pop-ups and customize them to be as unobtrusive as possible. It allows you to curate popups to be behavior-based. For example, showing a visitor a popup to subscribe to your newsletter when they've almost reached the end of an article, as it's a reasonable assumption that they like your content.
7. Pages oversaturated with heavy content
Businesses are keen to showcase their products in the best quality possible. You'll often see high-definition photos and videos all over websites in a bid to wow visitors and potential customers.
Why website creators like it:
Everyone wants to look professional and leave a unique impression. One way to do so is by using high-quality photos. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so website creators often try to add lots of visuals to impress visitors and entice them to keep browsing and shopping.
Why customers hate it:
Customers don't hate the images themselves (quite the opposite – they probably love them), but what they dislike is slow loading times. Loading high-quality pictures and visuals takes up a lot of bandwidth and slows down your website. 53% of mobile websites are abandoned if they take more than 3 seconds to load. So you might have a beautiful website – but most people won't see it, because it's too slow.
What you should do:
Finding a balance between image quality and size is the ideal solution. Try to avoid using large files that are multiple MBs in size, or use image compression tools (e.g. TinyPNG) to reduce the size of your visuals, while maintaining good quality. If you've built your website with Mozello, then you don't have to worry about this as Mozello website builder automatically optimizes your images and their loading patterns to ensure your page loads quickly.
Striking the right balance when you build a website
As with most things in life, creating a successful website is about finding the right balance. In this case, it's between usability, technical possibilities, and business requirements. The suggestions in this article are just that – suggestions.
Ideally, you should experiment to find what works best for you. For example, try out a pop-up and see if people respond to it. If nobody signs up for your mailing list, then you should definitely remove it. But if it helps you turn some customers into repeat buyers, then perhaps it's worth leaving – even if some other potential customers dislike it and leave.
A general rule of thumb to keep in mind when you build a website is to always ask yourself – how would I feel about this feature/element if I encountered it in someone else's online store? If the answer is negative, then think twice about implementing it.
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