Are you missing out on business because of poor web design? A poorly-constructed website could cost you many new customers.

In a world where looks matter, the look of your website is very important to your business success. Your website may be the first thing that a visitors see and this can influence their decision to do business with you.

We mostly do things online. Even if it’s just doing preliminary research, we will probably fire up our laptop and go browse somebody’s web site first before purchasing goods in-store or online.

Now, try to see things from your visitor’s perspective. How does your web site appear to visitors? Does your site invite them to approach and explore things further, or does it make them confused and cautious about what to do next?

How your website looks is only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can affect your web visitors’ thoughts and their decision to ultimately buy from you.

Can WordPress Help Fix Poor Web Design?

Here are just some of the main design problems that can affect your website:

Site Design Issues

Typical design issues that can affect your user’s perception of your website include:

• Color – Clashing color schemes can affect your results. This also applies to text and background color. There are methods to select web colors correctly and even safe web colors to help make sure that the colors you want to use will display consistently across various mediums. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain visually uninteresting, outdated and just plain ugly visual elements can result in users quickly losing interest in off your site. Visitors can also be affected by careless inconsistencies in the design elements and overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – The way your page content is structured can affect how users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigation menus, links, and other objects.
• Responsiveness – Since websites are now viewed by various devices with different-sized browsers, it’s important that your website’s design be fully responsive. If your website does not display well across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you may lose business opportunities.

Website Functionality Issues

Typical functionality problems may include:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for users is arriving on a site where some links don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics are missing. Persistent errors are not acceptable in any website, especially if your aim is to come across as a professional and dependable company. Your digital presence reflects your company. It’s vitally important therefore, to ensure that all your links, videos, and images remain running smoothly 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 make sure that remain proactive and that you get issues repaired as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your business offers users certain features or functionalities, then make sure that these features are not limited. For example, if you intend to sell goods or services online, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to select and add items to a cart, enter coupons, pay with a credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts, and confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

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

An unpleasant user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead them to vent their dissatisfaction in social networks, user forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

Common problems that can create a disappointing user experience include the following:

• User-Friendly – Your website must be user-friendly. Your service information should not be hard to find. Your prospective clients 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 files to your site (e.g. PDF forms and documents), make sure that users are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organized – If your website isn’t cleanly organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential buyers but current customers also. Having features such as descriptive links, product and service categories and clean areas where your content is grouped or linked together will provide visitors with a good experience.
• Eye-Catching Website – Users stick around on websites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that provide them with stimulating options. To accomplish this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your users. For example, highlight hyperlinks which lead to your product pages with professionally-taken photos or illustrations alongside well-crafted product descriptions. This is effective and will help you improve not just the user experience on your site, but also grow your sales and conversions.
• User Interactivity – Another aspect that helps users want to stay longer on your website is providing interactive features that engage customers, such as features that let users comment on, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your staff via a responsive help desk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … You also want visitors to browse quickly around your website and access your data without waiting around for content to load, so having your site optimized for faster loading pages is important.
• Reassurance – 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 that your site includes legal pages like a business information page, privacy statement, terms and conditions of usage, security information, earnings disclaimers, etc.

(Web design issues)

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

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

First, be aware that getting issues corrected on an existing site can take some time and can end up being quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you currently have, especially if the work requires a lot of web code editing.

If you are currently considering getting a new website developed or redeveloping an existing website, then we highly recommend that you consider choosing WordPress.

(WordPress can improve your website results!)

We currently provide more in-depth information about WordPress on this site, but here are just some things to keep in mind about why you should use WordPress:

Themes – Unique Web Design Features

WP themes are unique web site design template systems that enable you to immediately change the look and feel of your entire site with only a few mouse clicks.

There are literally thousands of great-looking themes created for WordPress available that can be easily downloaded. Many of these are either freely available, or can be purchased relatively inexpensively, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most WP themes are fully responsive and provide website owners with flexible and customizable options for changing design settings of your website such as the color, elements like headers, footers, menus and styles, layouts and more. This is just part of what makes WordPress such a powerful tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that ultimately helps to improve your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• Understanding Themes

WP Plugins – Powerful Scalability

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

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

Earlier we discussed areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly designed website could end up losing you customers.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a functionality that you want integrated with your site, just install a plugin that will help you get the job done.

Need a plugin that will let you know about any problems detected with your site like hyperlinks not working, audios not streaming, images that aren’t displaying or even alert you if your entire site is down? No problems … there are WP plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about issues so you can correct these immediately!

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 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 shopping cart, enter discount codes, complete purchases with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts and email confirmations, etc.

And just like WordPress themes, there are literally tens of thousands of great plugins created for WordPress that can be easily downloaded and are freely available, or you can buy for a relatively small price, once again, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WordPress Plugins)

You can learn more about WP plugins here:

• WordPress Plugins Expand Your Website’s Functionality

WordPress – An Engaging User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and exciting themes that cover all needs and uses and functional plugins that allow website users 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 immediate user experience that will keep visitors returning again and again.

As stated earlier, consumers nowadays will do research online before they make a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed with the customer in mind, your potential buyers will simply move on to another business that does provide them with a better website.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you expand your business business online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WordPress CMS software please see other posts we have published on this site.

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