Are you missing out on business because of poor web design? A poorly-built web site can end up losing you many new customers.

In a world where attractive things matter, how your web site looks is very important to the success of your business. Your website may be the first thing that a visitor sees and this can influence their purchasing decision.

People are now turning more than ever before to the internet to find products and services. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we will typically turn to our mobile phone and go browse somebody’s site before deciding what to do next.

Now, put yourself in your customer’s position. How does your web site appear to online users? Does your site invite people to enter and explore things further, or does it make people confused and unsure about what to do next?

What web visitors see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see in your screen) is only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can affect your web visitors’ experience and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Help You Fix Bad Web Design?

Let’s review a few key design problems that can affect your site:

Site Design Problems

Typical web design issues that can impact a user’s perception of your website include some following:

• Color – Clashing color combinations can impact on your site’s results. This also applies to using text and background color. There are ways to choose web colors correctly and even safe web color palettes to ensure that the color schemes you select will display consistently across different web formats. If in doubt, consult a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain uninteresting, outdated or just plain hard to read text can easily turn prospective clients away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic element choices or overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – How you lay out your content can significantly impact how visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other objects.
• Responsiveness – Since information is now accessed through a range of devices with different-sized browsers, it’s vitally important that the design of your website be fully responsive. If your website does not resize automatically to work on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you could lose potential opportunities.

Functionality Issues

Typical website functionality issues may include:

• Too many site errors – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a website where links don’t work, videos don’t play and graphics aren’t showing. Persistent errors are not acceptable for a website, especially when your goal is to come across as a professional. Your digital presence is a reflection of your business. It’s important therefore, to make sure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and graphics are up and running all the time. Sometimes, problems could be related to things such as your web hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to ensure that you’re always proactive and that you attend to all problems as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your site offers visitors specific features and functionalities, then make sure that these functionalities are not limited. For example, if you want to sell goods or services online, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily choose and add products to a shopping cart, apply coupons, buy using a credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

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

A bad user experience can leave a bad taste in users mouths and lead to venting their disappointment in social media, forums, review sites, commenting sections, etc., bringing you unwanted negative attention.

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

• User-Friendly – Your website should be user-friendly. Information about your products and services should not be hard to find. Your web visitors want user-friendly features and they want to find what they are looking for as quickly and as effortlessly as possible. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable files to your site (e.g. presentation slides), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organized – If your site content isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective clients but existing clients also. Having features like descriptive URLs, product and service categories and sections where related content is grouped or linked together will provide users with an enjoyable experience.
• Eye-Catching Web Site – Customers want websites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that are stimulating. To achieve this you need to strive for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your visitors. For example, highlight hyperlinks pointing to your product pages by inserting eye-catching photos or illustrations and well-written product descriptions. This is effective and will help you improve not only the user experience on your website, but also grow your sales and conversions.
• Engaging Features – Another aspect that helps visitors decide to stick around on your website is to provide interactive features that engage users, like features that let users leave comments, 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 … Additionally, you want visitors to navigate quickly within your website and access your data without waiting around for content to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Compliant Website – 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 web visitors that your business is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your website includes legal pages like a contact page, privacy policy, terms and conditions of use, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(Web design issues)

As you can see, there are many areas that can contribute to a poor user experience and impact your business success online. If your website isn’t designed in a user-friendly way, you run the risk of not only losing potential paying clients but also your existing clients as well.

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

First, keep in mind that getting issues corrected on an existing website can take time and can also end up being fairly costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you have, especially if what needs doing requires a lot of web code editing.

If you are in the process of having a new website built or overhauling an existing site, then we suggest that you consider using the WordPress web publishing platform.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We currently provide a lot more in-depth information about the benefits and advantages of WordPress on this site, but here are just some of the things to keep in mind about why you should choose WordPress:

WP Themes – Instant Web Design

WordPress themes are unique web site design templates that let you quickly modify the look of your entire website with just a few mouse clicks.

There are thousands of professional looking themes for WordPress users available that you can install on your site. Many of these are either free, or are relatively cheap to buy, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes built for WordPress nowadays are responsive and provide users with flexible and customizable features for changing your site’s design such as the color, elements like menus and headers, page layouts and more. This is just part of what makes WordPress an ideal tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that ultimately helps your business.

You can learn about WordPress themes here:

• A Newbie’s Guide To Understanding Themes

WordPress Plugins – Modular Functionality

Another great reason to build your site using the WordPress content publishing software is that WordPress gives website owners almost unlimited features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

WP plugins, like WP themes, integrate with your website to provide you with virtually unlimited functionality.

Earlier we discussed issues like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly designed web site can end up losing you business.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues quite easily. If there is a feature that needs to be integrated into your website, just install a plugin that gets the job done.

Want a plugin that will notify you immediately about any issues on your site like hyperlinks not working, videos not playing, pictures that are missing or even tell you if your whole web site has gone 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!

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 inexpensive plugins that will help you sell goods or services online and provide your users with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily choose and add products to a cart, apply discounts, buy using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and email confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally tens of thousands of fantastic plugins that you can install on your site at no cost, or that are relatively cheap and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WP Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• Adding New Functionality To Your Site With WP Plugins

WordPress – An Immediate User Experience

In addition to being able to correct problems caused by a poorly-built website, WordPress can also help you give your customers a great user experience.

WordPress provides beautiful, professional and exciting themes that cover all kinds of uses and feature-rich plugins that allow customers to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-driven website, WordPress themes, plugins and great content, you can create a very rich user experience that will keep users coming back again and again.

As stated earlier, consumers nowadays will do extensive research online before they make a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rich user experience, these consumers will not return and simply move on to another business that does provide them with a better website.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WP software please see our related posts section.

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