Are you losing business because of poor web design? Regardless of how strong your services are, a poorly-built web site can end up losing you valuable business.

In a world where attractive design sells, your website’s design can play a significant part in the success of your business. Your website is the first thing that a web visitor sees and this could influence their decision to purchase from you.

Think about how you research services nowadays. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we will typically fire up our laptop and go visit somebody’s website before making our next move.

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

What customers see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see in your screen) is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other factors than can influence your visitors’ experience and their decision to purchase from you.

Can WordPress Help You Fix A Poorly-Constructed Web Site?

Here are just some of the more important design problems that can affect your website’s results and performance:

Web Design Issues

Typical design issues that can influence a user’s perception about your site include:

• Color – Poor color combinations affect your results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are ways to choose web colors correctly and even safe web colors to ensure that the palettes you choose will display predictably across different mediums. If in doubt, seek the services of a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain unattractive, outdated and just plain hard to read typefaces can result in visitors quickly losing interest in away from your site. Visitors can also be affected by overall design inconsistencies and overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – The way your page content is structured can affect how users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational menus, links, and other objects.
• Responsiveness – As information is now accessed by various devices with different-sized screens, it’s important that the design of your website be responsive. If your web pages do not display well across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you may experience business losses.

Functionality Issues

Common website functionality problems include:

• Persistent errors – A huge turn-off for users is arriving on a website where some links don’t work, videos don’t play and graphics are missing. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable in any website, especially when you are trying to come across as a professional and reliable business. Your website is a reflection of your organization. It’s important to ensure that all your links, videos, and graphics are up and running all the time. In some cases, these problems could be related to factors like your hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to make sure that remain proactive and that you attend to all problems immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your site provides visitors certain features and functionalities, then make sure that these features are not limited. For example, if you intend to sell products online, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to choose and add items to a cart, enter coupons, complete their orders with a credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Typically, where visitors suffer most due to a poorly-designed web site is the “user experience”.

An unpleasant user experience can leave a bad taste in visitors’ mouths and lead to sharing their frustrations on social networks, forums, review sites, comments, etc., bringing you unwanted negative attention.

Typical issues that can create a poor user experience include the following:

• User-Friendly – Your website must be user-friendly. Your product information should not be kept in obscure corners. Your customers want user-friendly features and they want to find things quickly and with minimal hassle. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable information to your site (e.g. presentation slides), make sure that users are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organization – If your site isn’t cleanly organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential customers but current customers too. Providing features like descriptive links, product and service categories and sections where topic-related content is grouped or linked together can provide visitors with an enjoyable user experience.
• Stimulating Web Site – Visitors want sites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that are stimulating. To accomplish this you need to find a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your users. For example, highlight hyperlinks which point to product pages by inserting beautiful images next to well-crafted product descriptions. This is effective and will help you improve not just the user experience on your site, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• Interactive Site – Another thing that helps customers want to stick around on your site is providing interactive features that engage users, like allowing them to comment on, 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 … You also want visitors to be able to navigate quickly within your website and access your information without waiting around for content to load, so having your site optimized for page loading speed is important.
• Compliant Site – One of the most important and often neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to ensure that users feel comfortable interacting with you online. To reassure your visitors that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal compliance pages like a business contact page, privacy statement, terms and conditions of usage, security information, affiliate disclaimers, etc.

(Web design issues)

As you can see, there are many areas that can contribute to a poor user experience and negatively impact your business results online. If your site is poorly built, you run the serious risk of not only losing prospective paying customers but also existing customers as well.

Now … what if you have arrived on this site because you have an existing site with design issues that you feel could be affecting your business?

First, be aware that getting problems fixed on an existing website can take some time and can also end up being quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you operate, especially if it requires a lot of code writing.

If you are currently researching the process of having a new website developed or redesigning an existing site, then we highly recommend that you consider building or redesigning your website with the WordPress web site management platform.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We plan to share a lot more articles about WordPress on this site, but here are just a few of the things to keep in mind about why you should seriously consider using WordPress:

WordPress – Inexpensive Website Design

WordPress themes are unique web design templates that allow you to completely customize the look and feel of your website without touching the site’s content and changing any core software.

There are thousands of professional themes designed for WordPress users available that you can download and install on your website. Many of these are either free of charge, or they can be bought for a relatively inexpensive price, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes created for WordPress nowadays are fully responsive and provide website owners with flexible and customizable features for changing your website’s design such as the color, template elements like headers, footers, menus and styles, layouts and more. Themes are just one of the many things that make WordPress an ideal tool for helping you create a design for your website that works for your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• A Basic Guide To Understanding WordPress Themes

WordPress Plugins – Virtually Unlimited Functionality

Another great reason to choose WordPress is that WordPress provides site owners with almost unlimited features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

WordPress plugins, like WordPress themes, integrate easily with your site to provide you with almost unlimited features or new functionality.

Earlier in this post we discussed areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly constructed web site can end up losing you customers.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a feature that needs to be in your site, just install a plugin that will get the job done.

Need a plugin that will notify you immediately about any issues with your website like hyperlinks not working, videos not playing, pictures that aren’t displaying or even alert you if your entire site is down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about problems so you can correct these immediately!

Need a plugin that will let you turn your site into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce solution? Again, no problem! There are several plugins that will help you sell goods or services on your site and provide your customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to choose and add products to a cart, apply discounts, purchase using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are thousands of fantastic WP plugins that can be easily downloaded at $0 cost, or you can purchase for a relatively inexpensive cost and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WordPress Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• Using WordPress Plugins Enhance Your Site’s Features And Functionality

WordPress – An Interactive User Experience

In addition to being able to address problems caused by a poorly-constructed web site, WordPress can also help you create a great user experience for your visitors.

WordPress provides beautiful and exciting themes that cover all types of uses and plugins that allow website users to connect, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress website, WordPress themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a very rich user experience that will keep them returning for more.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers do extensive research online before they make purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed with customers in mind, these consumers will simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress please click on links to visit our related posts section.

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