Are you missing out on prospects because of a poorly-designed site? Regardless of how great the quality of your products and services may be, a poorly-constructed web site could end up losing you prospective new customers and important sales.

In a world where appearances matter, how your website looks can contribute significantly to your business success. Your website is probably the first thing that your potential customer sees and this could affect their decision to buy your products and use your services.

Think about how you do research about businesses nowadays. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we will turn on our smart phone and go visit someone’s web site first before purchasing something in-store or online.

Now, put yourself in your customer’s shoes. How does your web site appear to them? Does your site invite them to enter and explore things further, or does it make people hesitant and cautious about where to go next?

What your potential customers see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see on your screen) is only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can influence your visitors’ experience and their decision to ultimately buy from you.

Can WordPress Fix Bad Web Design?

Let’s take a look at some of the main design issues that can affect your site:

Web Site Design Problems

Some of the most common web design problems that can influence your user’s perception about your website include:

• Color – Bad color combinations can impact on your site’s results. This also applies to your choice of text and background color. There are methods that can help you specify web colors correctly and even safe web color palettes to help make sure that the palettes you select will display correctly across different web formats. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically unexciting, outdated and just plain ugly images can turn prospects off your site. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic elements or overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – How your content is arranged can significantly impact how visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigation items, links, and other useful orientation features like search boxes are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, content columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – As information is now viewed by various devices with different-sized screens, it’s important that the design of your website be fully responsive. If your website does not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will lose customers.

Site Functionality Issues

Typical website functionality issues can include some following:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is arriving on a site where hyperlinks don’t work, videos don’t play and graphics aren’t displaying. Persistent errors are not acceptable, especially when your aim is to come across as a professional and reliable company. Your website is a reflection of your company. It’s vitally important therefore, to make sure that all your links, videos, and graphics are up and running at all times. In some cases, problems may be caused by factors such as your web hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to make sure that you’re consistently proactive and that you get problems fixed as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your web site offers visitors specific functionalities, then make sure that these functionalities are not limited. For example, if you would like to sell goods or services on your site, make sure that you provide users with full e-commerce features that allow them to choose and add items to a shopping cart, use discounts, buy using credit cards or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Invariably, the area that most suffers due to a poorly-constructed website is the “user experience”.

An unpleasant user experience can leave a bad taste in users mouths and lead to sharing their disappointment on social sites, user forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

Typical issues that can cause a bad user experience include some or all of the following:

• User-Friendly – Your site should be user-friendly. Your product information should be easy to find. Your site visitors want user-friendly features and they want to find things quickly and with no hassle. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable content to your site (e.g. videos), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organized – If your website isn’t well organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential buyers but also current clients. Things like search engine-friendly URLs, product and service categories and sections where your content is grouped or linked together provides visitors with a good experience.
• Stimulating Site – Customers stay longer on sites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that are eye-catching and stimulating. To achieve this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your visitors. For example, draw attention to hyperlinks which point to product pages with professionally-taken graphics next to well-written product descriptions. This is very effective and can help improve not only the user experience on your website, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• User Interactivity – Another aspect that helps users want to stick around on your site is to provide interactive features that engage customers, like the ability to leave comments, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your staff via a responsive help desk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … Additionally, you want visitors to move quickly within your site and access your information without waiting around for pages to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Compliant Site – One of the most important and often neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make users feel confident doing business with you online. To reassure your prospective customers that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your website includes legal pages like a business contact page, privacy policy, terms and conditions of usage, security information, earnings disclaimers, etc.

(Website design issues)

As the above shows, there are many areas that can contribute to a poor user experience and impact your business success online. If your web site is poorly constructed, you run the risk of not only losing prospective customers but also some of existing clients too.

Now … what if you have arrived found this information because you currently have an existing website with design problems that you feel are affecting your business?

First, understand that getting issues fixed on an existing site can take some time and can also be somewhat costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you operate, especially if the work requires rewriting web code extensively.

If you are currently considering getting a new website developed or upgrading an existing site, then we strongly suggest that you consider choosing the WordPress web site publishing platform.

(WordPress can help you improve your website results!)

We currently provide more in-depth articles about the benefits and advantages of the WordPress website publishing platform on this site, but here are just some key points to keep in mind about why you should choose WordPress:

WP Themes – Flexible Website Design

WordPress themes are unique web design templates that enable you to immediately change the look and feel of your site with just a few mouse clicks.

There are literally thousands of professional looking WP themes available that you can install on your website. Many themes are either free of charge, or they are extremely well priced, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes created for WordPress are responsive and provide site owners with customizable features for changing design settings on your website like color, template elements like menus, headers, footers, layouts and more. Themes are just part of what makes WordPress an ideal tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that helps your business.

You can learn about WordPress themes here:

• A Basic Guide To Understanding Themes

Plugins – Virtually Unlimited Expansion

Another great reason to choose WordPress is that WordPress gives site owners scalable functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

WordPress plugins, like themes, integrate with your website to provide you with almost unlimited new functionality.

Earlier in this post we discussed problems in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built website could lose you money.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite easily. If there is a functionality you would like integrated with your website, just install a WordPress plugin that will get the job done.

Need a plugin that will let you know about any problems on your site like hyperlinks not working, videos not streaming, graphics that aren’t showing or even tell you if your whole website is down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about issues so you can take immediate corrective action!

Want a plugin that will transform your website into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce business solution? Again, no problem! There are several inexpensive plugins that will help you sell products on your site and provide your visitors with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to select and add items to a cart, apply discounts, purchase with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts and email confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are thousands of fantastic plugins created for WordPress that you can install on your website at no cost, or that are extremely well priced, once again, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WordPress Plugins)

You can learn more about WordPress plugins here:

• WP Plugins – Extending Your Website’s Capabilities

WordPress – An Engaging User Experience

In addition to being able to address problems caused by a poorly-designed website, WordPress can also help you create a great user experience for your customers.

WordPress provides beautiful, professional and visually-exciting themes that cover all types of uses and applications and plugins that allow web users to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-driven site, WP themes, plugins and great content, you can create a rich and enhanced user experience that will keep your visitors coming back for more.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers nowadays do extensive research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed with the customer in mind, these consumers will not return and simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website or better user experience.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website please see other posts we have published on this site.

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