Are you losing prospects because of poor web design? No matter how strong your services are, a poorly-constructed web site can lose you many new customers.

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

People are turning more than ever before to the internet to find products and services. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we will turn on our smart device and go browse a website before making our next move.

Now, put yourself in your customer’s position. How does your web presence appear to them? Does it invite people to come and explore things further, or does it make them confused and cautious about what to do next?

What your visitors see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see in your screen) is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other things than can influence your web visitors’ experience and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Fix A Poorly-Built Web Site?

Here are just a few key design problems that can affect your web site’s results:

Web Design Issues

Common web design problems that can impact your visitor’s perception about your site include:

• Color – Clashing color schemes affect your results. This also applies to your choice of text and background color. There are ways to choose web colors correctly and even safe web colors to help ensure that the palettes you want to use will display consistently across different web formats. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically uninteresting, outdated and just plain ugly graphics can easily result in users quickly losing interest in off your site. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic elements and excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – How your site is arranged can affect the way visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other objects.
• Responsiveness – Since business information is now viewed through a range of devices with different-sized browsers, it’s vitally important that the design of your website be responsive. If your website does not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you may lose business opportunities.

Web Site Functionality Problems

Common website functionality issues include:

• Too many website errors – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a site where hyperlinks don’t work, videos don’t play and images are missing. Subpar functionality is not acceptable on any website, especially if your goal is to come across as a professional and reliable company. Your digital presence reflects your organization. It’s important to ensure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and images are working all the time. In some cases, problems could be caused by things such as your web hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to make sure that remain proactive and that all issues are fixed immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your web site offers users certain features, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you want to sell products online, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily select and add items to a cart, apply coupons, purchase with credit cards or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Typically, where customers suffer the most due to a poorly-built website is in the realm of the “user experience”.

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

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

• User-Friendly – Your site needs to be user-friendly. Information about your products and services should be easy to find. Your 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.
• Organization – If your site isn’t cleanly organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential buyers but also existing customers. Features such as descriptive URLs, product and service categories and well-organized sections where your content is grouped or linked together will provide users with an enjoyable experience.
• Stimulating Web Site – Users stick around on sites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that are eye-catching and stimulating. This requires achieving a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your website users. For example, highlight links that direct customers to your product pages by inserting beautiful photos or illustrations with well-crafted product descriptions. This is very effective and will help improve not just the user experience on your site, but can also help you generate more sales and conversions.
• User Interactivity – Another aspect that helps visitors decide to stick around on your website is providing interactive features that engage customers, like the ability to 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 be able to navigate quickly around your site and access your information without waiting around for content to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Reassurance – One of the most important and often most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to ensure that users feel confident doing business with you online. To reassure your visitors that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your site includes legal compliance pages like a business contact page, privacy statement, terms and conditions of use, security information, affiliate disclaimers, etc.

(Web site 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 isn’t designed in a user-friendly way, you run the risk of not only losing potential paying clients but also your existing customers as well.

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

First, keep in mind 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 currently own, especially if it requires extensive web code editing.

If you are currently considering getting a new website built or redeveloping an existing website, then we recommend that you consider building or redesigning your website with WordPress.

(WordPress can improve your website results!)

We currently share a lot more posts about WordPress on this site, but here are just some of the things to keep in mind about why you should consider WordPress:

WordPress – Customizable Website Design

WP themes are unique web site design template systems that let you immediately customize the look and feel of your site without touching the site’s content or changing any of the underlying software.

There are literally thousands of professionally designed themes available that can be easily downloaded. Many of these are either freely available, or they are extremely affordable, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes are fully responsive and provide website owners with highly customizable features for changing the design on your site like color, template elements like headers, footers, menus and styles, page layouts and more. Themes are just one of the many things that make WordPress such a great tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that works for your business.

You can learn about WP themes here:

• WordPress For Beginners – An Introduction To Themes

WordPress Plugins – Powerful Expansion

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

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

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

Plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite inexpensively. If there is a functionality you want integrated with your site, just install a plugin that will do exactly what you need done.

Want a plugin that will notify you immediately about any issues on your website like hyperlinks not working, audios not playing, images that are missing or even tell you if your whole web site is down? No problems … there are WP plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about issues so you can correct these immediately!

Want a plugin that will turn your site into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce solution? Again, no problem! There are several WP plugins that will help you sell products online and provide your users with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add items to a cart, enter coupons, buy using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices and confirmations, etc.

And just like WordPress themes, there are thousands of fantastic plugins built for WordPress that can be easily downloaded free of charge, or that are extremely affordable and will save you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WordPress Plugins)

Learn more about WordPress plugins here:

• Using WordPress Plugins To Enhance Your Blog’s Features

WordPress – A Rich Website User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful and exciting themes that cover all kinds of applications and functional plugins that allow visitors to contact, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress site, WP themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a a highly interactive and engaging user experience that will keep them returning again and again.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers nowadays will do research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed with customers in mind, consumers will simply move on to another business with a better website or better user experience.

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

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