Are you missing out on customers because of a poorly-designed site? A poorly-built web site can end up losing you valuable business.

In a world where looks matter, how your web site looks can be very important to your business success. Your website is the first thing that a web visitors see and this can affect their decision to use your services.

People are now turning more than ever to the internet to find products and services. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we will jump online and go browse a site before deciding what to do next.

Now, try to see things from your customer’s perspective. How does your digital presence appear to visitors? Does it invite people to draw closer and explore things further, or does it make people confused and cautious about what to do next?

What prospects 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 affect your visitors’ experience and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Help Fix Poor Web Design?

Let’s review some of the more important design issues that can affect your site’s results and performance:

Web Design Issues

Typical web design issues that can influence your visitor’s perception of your site include:

• Color – Clashing color combinations can impact on your website’s results. This also applies to text and background color. There are tools that can help you select web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to help make sure that the colors you select will display correctly across various mediums. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain unexciting, outdated and just plain ugly graphics can result in visitors quickly losing interest in off your site. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic element choices or excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – How you structure your pages can significantly impact the way users navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other useful objects.
• Responsiveness – As information is now viewed by various devices with different-sized screens, it’s vitally important that your web design be responsive. If your web pages do not resize automatically to fit your content across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you could lose valuable customers.

Functionality Issues

Typical functionality issues can include:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for users is landing on a site where links don’t work, videos can’t play and images are missing. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable, especially if you are trying to come across as a professional. Your website reflects your company. It’s important therefore, to ensure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and images are up and running at all times. Sometimes, these problems are related to external things such as your hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to make sure that remain proactive and that you attend to problems immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your business offers visitors certain functionality, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you want to sell products on your site, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add items to a cart, apply coupons, order with a credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts, and confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Normally, where your business suffers most noticeably due to a poorly-built site is in the realm of the “user experience”.

An unsatisfactory user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead to venting their dissatisfaction across social sites, forums, review sites, comments, etc., bringing you negative publicity.

Here are just some common issues that can lead to a poor user experience:

• User-Friendly – Your website should be easy to use and effortless to navigate around in. Your service information should not be hard to find. Your site visitors want user-friendly features and they want to find what they are looking for quickly and without disappointment. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable content to your site (e.g. PDF files), make sure that users are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organized – If your web site isn’t cleanly organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective customers but also existing clients. Features such as search engine-friendly URLs, product and service categories and sections where topic-related content can be easily found can provide visitors with a good user experience.
• Stimulating Website – Customers stay longer on websites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that provide them with eye-catching options. To accomplish this you need to strive for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your users. For example, draw attention to links which direct visitors to product pages by inserting professionally-taken product pictures alongside well-written descriptions. This is very effective and can help improve not just the user experience on your site, but can also lead to more sales and conversions.
• User Interactivity – Another thing that helps to improve user experience on your website is to provide interactive features that engage your visitors, such as features that let them\visitors comment on, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your support staff via a responsive helpdesk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … You also want users to browse quickly through your website and access your information without waiting around for pages to load, so site loading optimization is important.
• Compliant Website – One of the most important and often most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to ensure that users feel comfortable interacting with you online. To reassure your web visitors that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your web site includes legal pages such as a contact page, privacy statement, terms of usage, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(Site design issues)

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

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

First, understand that getting problems fixed on an existing site can take time and can be somewhat costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you operate, especially if what needs doing requires a lot of coding.

If you are considering having a new website built or upgrading an existing web site, then we suggest that you seriously consider building or redesigning your website with WordPress.

(WordPress can help you improve your website results!)

We currently share a lot more information about the benefits and advantages of WordPress on this site, but here are just some key points to keep in mind about why you should seriously choose WordPress:

Themes – Unique Web Design Features

WordPress themes are unique web design templates that allow you to quickly modify the look of your website without touching the site’s content and modifying any core software.

There are literally thousands of professional looking themes available that you can download and easily install on your website. Many themes are either free of charge, or they are extremely affordable, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes nowadays are fully responsive and provide you with customizable options for changing the design of your website like color, elements like headers and footers, page 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:

• WordPress For Business – An Overview Of WP Themes

Plugins – Modular Features

Another compelling reason to choose the WordPress CMS is that WordPress gives you modular functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

WP plugins, like themes, integrate easily with your website to provide you with almost unlimited new features.

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

WordPress plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite inexpensively. If there is a feature that needs to be added to your website, just install a plugin that gets the job done.

Need a plugin that will notify you immediately about any problems detected on your site like hyperlinks not working, videos not streaming, graphics that aren’t showing or even tell you if your entire site 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 site into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce system? Again, no problem! There are several plugins that will help you sell products on your site and provide your customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily select and add items to a cart, use coupons, complete their orders using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are thousands of fantastic plugins created for WordPress users that can be downloaded and are freely available, or that are relatively cheap to buy and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WordPress Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• WordPress Plugins Expand Your Website’s Features

WordPress – An Enhanced Web User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and visually-exciting themes that cover all needs and uses and plugins that allow site users to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-powered website, WordPress themes, plugins and great content, you can create a a highly interactive and engaging user experience that will keep them returning to your website.

As stated earlier, consumers nowadays will do research online before they make purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rewarding user experience, they will simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website.

Hopefully, now you have 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 using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.

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