Are you losing customers because of a poorly-constructed website? Regardless of how great the quality of your services may be, a poorly-constructed web site could cost you potential customers and important sales.

In a world where aesthetic principles matter, the way your web site looks is very important to the success of your business. Your website is the first thing that your web visitors see and this could affect their purchasing decision.

Think about how most people do research about products nowadays. Even if it’s just for doing preliminary research, we will fire up our laptop and go visit a web site first before purchasing goods in-store or online.

Now, try to see things from your visitor’s viewpoint. How does your web presence appear to other people? Does it invite them to enter and explore things further, or does it make them hesitant and unsure about where to go next?

What your web visitors see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see in your screen) is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can influence your web visitors’ perceptions and their decision to purchase from you.

Can WordPress Help Fix Your Poorly-Designed Website?

Here are just some of the main design problems that can affect your web site’s results and performance:

Web Design Issues

Common design issues that can influence your visitor’s perception of your website include:

• Color – Clashing color combinations affect your results. This also applies to using text and background color. There are tools to specify web colors correctly and even safe web color palettes to make sure that the colors you choose will display consistently across different mediums. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain aesthetically unpleasant, outdated and just plain old ugly images can turn visitors away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by careless inconsistencies in your design elements and overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – The way your pages are structured can impact the way visitors navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other orientation elements like search boxes are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, page columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – As websites are now viewed by various devices with different-sized browsers, it’s vitally important that the design of your website be fully responsive. If your web pages do not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will lose opportunities.

Functionality Issues

Typical functionality problems may include some or all of the following:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is arriving on a page where some hyperlinks don’t work, videos don’t play and images aren’t displaying. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable, especially if you are trying to come across professionally. Your web presence reflects your organization. It’s vitally important therefore, to make sure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and graphics remain up and running at all times. In some cases, problems are related to factors like your web hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to ensure that remain proactive and that you attend to all problems immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your business offers users specific functionalities, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you intend to sell products on your site, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add products to a shopping cart, use discount coupons, buy with a credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Invariably, where prospective customers suffer most because of a poorly-constructed website is the “user experience”.

A disappointing user experience can leave a bad taste in visitors’ mouths and lead them to share their dissatisfaction on social media, forums, review sites, commenting sections, etc ….

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

• User-Friendly – Your site should be easy to use and effortless to navigate around in. Information about your products and services should be easy to find. Your site visitors want user-friendly features and they want to find what they are looking for quickly and with no hassle. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable content to your site (e.g. presentation slides), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organized – If your site isn’t well organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective customers but also existing customers. Providing features such as search engine-friendly links, product and service categories and sections where topic-related content can be easily found can help provide visitors with an enjoyable experience.
• Eye-Catching Website – Visitors stay longer on websites that are easy to use, well organized, 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 website users. For example, draw attention to hyperlinks that point to product pages with professionally-taken graphics alongside well-crafted product descriptions. This can be very effective and can help improve not only the user experience on your site, but can also help you get more sales and conversions.
• User Engagement Features – Another thing that helps visitors want to stay longer on your site is providing interactive features that engage users, such as features that let them\visitors 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 … You also want users to navigate quickly around your site and access your information without waiting around for pages to load, so site loading optimization is important.
• Reassurance – One of the most important and often most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make users feel confident interacting with you online. To reassure your visitors that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal compliance pages such as 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 negatively impact your business success online. If your site is poorly built, you run the risk of not only losing prospective paying clients but also current customers too.

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

First, keep in mind that getting a complete website overhaul can take time and can also end up being fairly costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you operate, especially if it requires extensive web development.

If you are currently in the process of getting a new website built or upgrading an existing site, then we suggest that you consider choosing WordPress.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We plan to share more information about the benefits and advantages of 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:

Themes – Instant Web Design

WP themes are unique web design templates that let you instantly change the look of your entire website with just a few mouse clicks.

There are thousands of professional looking themes for WordPress site owners available that you can download and easily install on your site. Many of these are either freely available, or they are extremely affordable, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WP Themes)

Most WP themes nowadays are responsive and provide you with customizable features for changing your website’s design settings such as color, elements like menus, headers, footers, layouts and more. This is just one of the many things that make WordPress an ideal tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that works for your business.

Learn about themes here:

• A Newbie’s Guide To WordPress Themes

WordPress Plugins – Powerful Expansion

Another compelling reason to choose WordPress is that WordPress gives website owners almost unlimited features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

Plugins, like themes, integrate easily with your website to provide you with almost unlimited functionality.

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

Plugins can help you overcome these issues quite inexpensively. If there is a feature that you want to add to your website, just install a WP plugin that does what you need done.

Need a plugin that will let you know about any problems with your site like hyperlinks not working, videos not streaming, pictures that aren’t showing or even alert you if your whole site has gone down? No problems … there are WordPress plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about problems so you can correct these immediately!

Want a plugin that will let you turn your website into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce solution? Again, no problem! There are several inexpensive and easy-to-use WordPress plugins that will help you sell goods or services online and provide your visitors with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to select and add products to a cart, apply discount codes, complete their orders using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices and confirmations, etc.

And just like WordPress themes, there are literally thousands of useful plugins built for WordPress that you can install on your site free of charge, or that you can buy relatively inexpensively and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WordPress Plugins)

You can learn more about plugins here:

• Using WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Expand Your Web Site’s Functionality

WordPress – A Rich Website User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful and exciting themes that cover all types of uses and applications and functional plugins that allow visitors to contact, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-driven website, WP themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a very rich and interactive user experience that will keep your visitors returning to your site.

As stated earlier, consumers will do extensive research online before making purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rewarding user experience, your potential buyers 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 website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit our related posts section.

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