Are you losing business because of poor web design? A poorly-built website can lose you prospective new clients and valuable business opportunities.

In a world where attractive design sells, your website’s design can be important to the success of your business. Your website may be the first thing that your web visitor sees and this could 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 instinctively jump online and go browse somebody’s website before making our next move.

Now, try to see things from your customer’s viewpoint. How does your web site appear to other people? Does your site invite people to draw closer and explore things further, or does it make them confused and unsure about where to go next?

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

Can WordPress Help Fix A Poorly-Constructed Web Site?

Here are just a few key design problems that can affect your site:

Website Design Problems

Some common design problems that can affect your potential customer’s perception about your website include some following:

• Color – Bad color combinations can impact on your results. This also applies to your choice of text and background color. There are methods that can help you choose web colors correctly and even safe web color palettes to ensure that the palettes you want to use will display predictably across different web formats. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain unexciting, outdated or just plain old ugly images can result in visitors quickly losing interest in off your site. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic element choices and excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – How you structure your pages can impact the way users navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigation menus, links, and other useful objects.
• Responsiveness – As websites are now viewed through a range of devices with different-sized screens, it’s important that the design of your website be fully responsive. If your web pages do not display well across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you may lose valuable business opportunities.

Web Site Functionality Problems

Some common website functionality problems can include:

• Persistent website errors – A huge turn-off for visitors is arriving on a site where hyperlinks don’t work, videos don’t play and images are missing. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable in a website, especially if your aim is to come across as a professional and reliable company. Your website is a reflection of your business. It’s vitally important to make sure that all your links, videos, and graphics remain running smoothly at all times. Sometimes, these problems could be related to external factors like your 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 problems as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your website offers users specific features, 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 users with full e-commerce features that allow them to choose and add items to a shopping cart, enter coupons, complete their orders using a credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Normally, the area that is most affected due to a poorly-constructed web site is in the realm of the “user experience”.

An unsatisfactory user experience can leave a bad taste in visitors’ mouths and lead to venting their dissatisfaction on social media, user forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

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

• User-Friendly – Your site should be easy to use and easy to navigate. Information about your products and services should be easy to locate. Your customers 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 information to your site (e.g. PDF forms and documents), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organized – If your site content isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential clients but also existing customers. Things like search engine-friendly links, product and service categories and sections where your content can be easily found can help provide visitors with an enjoyable experience.
• Stimulating Site – Users stick around on sites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that provide them with eye-catching options. This means finding a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your visitors. For example, draw attention to hyperlinks which lead to product pages by inserting great images beside well-written product descriptions. This can be very effective and can help you improve not just the user experience on your website, but also grow your sales and conversions.
• Engaging Features – Another area that helps users want to stay longer on your site is providing interactive features that engage your visitors, such as features that let users leave comments, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your support staff via a responsive help desk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … Additionally, you want visitors to move quickly around your site and access your information without waiting around for content to load, so site loading optimization is important.
• Compliant Site – One of the most important and often ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that users feel confident doing business with you online. To reassure your web visitors that your business is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal pages such as a business information page, privacy policy, terms of usage, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(Web site 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 site is poorly designed, you run the serious risk of not only losing prospective customers but also some of existing customers as well.

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

First, keep in mind that getting problems fixed on an existing website can take time and can also be somewhat costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you currently operate, especially if what needs doing requires a lot of code editing.

If you are currently in the process of getting a new website built or redeveloping an existing website, then we suggest that you seriously consider using the WordPress web content management platform.

(WordPress can improve your website results!)

We currently publish more in-depth information about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress on this site, but here are just some key points to keep in mind about why you should seriously consider using WordPress:

WordPress – Unique Web Design Features

WP themes are unique web design template systems that let you easily modify the look of your entire website without touching the website’s content or changing any of the underlying site functionality.

There are literally thousands of professional looking WordPress themes available that can be downloaded. 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 are responsive and provide site owners with flexible and customizable options for changing your site’s design such as the color, template elements like headers and footers, layouts and more. This is just one of the many things that make WordPress such a powerful tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that ultimately helps your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• WordPress For Newbies – An Introduction To Themes

WordPress – Modular Features

Another great reason to choose the WordPress content management platform is that WordPress gives you powerful functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

WordPress plugins, like themes, integrate with your website to provide you with almost unlimited scalability.

Earlier we looked at problems in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built web site can end up losing you money.

WordPress plugins can help you overcome these problems quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a functionality you need to add to your website, just install a plugin that will do what you need done.

Want a plugin that will notify you about any issues with your website such as links not working, videos not playing, pictures that are missing or even tell you if your entire site is down? No problems … there are WP plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about problems so you can take immediate corrective action!

Want a plugin that will let you turn 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 goods or services on your site and provide your users with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add items to a cart, apply discounts, order using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and email confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally thousands of useful plugins built for WordPress site owners that you can install on your website and are freely available, or that you can purchase quite cheaply, once again, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WordPress Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• Add New Features And Functionality To Your Blog With Plugins

WordPress – An Interactive Web User Experience

In addition to being able to correct issues caused by a poorly-built web site, WordPress can also help you provide your customers with a great user experience.

WordPress provides beautiful, professional and visually-exciting themes that cover all needs and uses and plugins that allow customers to connect, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-driven website, WordPress themes, plugins and great content, you can create a rich and immediate user experience that will keep visitors returning again and again.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers will do research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rich and engaging user experience, your prospective buyers will not return and simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website and better website experience.

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

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