Are you missing out on customers because of poor web design? No matter how professional your company is, a poorly-built website could end up costing you potential customers and cause more problems than you can handle.

In a world where first impressions matter, your website’s design is very important to the success of your business. Your website is probably the first thing that your web visitors see and this can affect their decision to use your services.

Think about how most people research products nowadays. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we still turn on our mobile phone and go visit somebody’s web site first before buying products in-store or online.

Now, try to see things from your customer’s point of view. How does your web site appear to online users? Does it invite them to enter and explore things further, or does it make people confused and unsure about what to do next?

What your visitors see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see in your screen) is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other factors than can affect your visitors’ perceptions and their decision to move forward and do business with you.

Can WordPress Fix Your Poorly-Designed Web Site?

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

Web Design Issues

Common design problems that can influence your visitor’s perception about your website include:

• Color – Poor color schemes can impact on your results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are ways to select web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to make sure that the color schemes you decide on will display consistently across different devices. If in doubt, consult a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain visually uninteresting, outdated or just plain ugly images can turn users away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by overall design inconsistencies and excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – How you structure your pages can significantly impact the way users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigation menus, links, and other useful objects.
• Responsiveness – Since websites are now accessed using various devices with different-sized browsers, it’s vitally important that your website’s design be fully responsive. If your website does not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will incur business losses.

Website Functionality Problems

Typical functionality issues include the following:

• Frequent website errors – A huge turn-off for users is arriving on a site where hyperlinks don’t work, videos can’t play and images aren’t displaying. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable in a website, especially if your goal is to come across as a professional and dependable business. Your digital presence reflects your company. It’s important to make sure that all your links, videos, and graphics are working at all times. Sometimes, problems are related to factors like your hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to make sure that remain proactive and that you attend to all problems as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your web site provides visitors certain functionality, then make sure that these functionalities are not limited. For example, if you would like to sell goods or services on your site, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to select and add products to a cart, use coupons, buy with a credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices, 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”.

A poor user experience can leave a bad taste in visitors’ mouths and lead to sharing their disappointment on social media, 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 website should be easy to use and effortless to navigate around in. Your product information should be easy to locate. Your visitors want user-friendly features and they want to find what they are looking for quickly and with minimal hassle. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable content to your site (e.g. presentation slides), make sure that users are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organization – If your website isn’t well organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective customers but existing customers as well. Things like descriptive links, product and service categories and clean areas where your content can be easily found provides visitors with a good user experience.
• Stimulating Features – Customers stay longer on sites that are easy to use, well organized, and that provide them with eye-catching options. This requires finding a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your website users. For example, highlight links pointing to product pages with professionally-taken graphics beside well-written descriptions. This is effective and can help you improve not only the user experience on your website, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• Interactive Features – Another thing that helps to improve user experience on your website is providing interactive features that engage users, like the ability to leave comments, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your staff via a responsive helpdesk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … You also want users to browse quickly within your site and access your information without waiting around for pages to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Trustworthy Website – One of the most important and often most ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to make users feel comfortable interacting with you online. To reassure your visitors that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your website includes legal compliance pages such as a contact page, privacy policy, terms and conditions of use, security information, financial 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 isn’t designed in a user-friendly way, you run the serious risk of not only losing prospective clients but also your current customers too.

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

First, keep in mind that getting issues corrected on an existing site can take some time and can be quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you have, especially if it requires a lot of coding.

If you are considering having a new website developed or redesigning an existing site, then we recommend that you consider building or redesigning your site with WordPress.

(WordPress can help you improve your website results!)

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

WordPress – Unique Website Design Features

WordPress themes are unique web design template systems that allow you to completely change the look of your entire site without affecting the site’s content or changing any of the core site functionality.

There are thousands of professional themes built for WordPress site owners available that you can install on your website. Many themes are either freely available, or they are extremely well priced, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most WordPress themes nowadays are fully responsive and provide website owners with customizable options for changing design settings of your site such as 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 ultimately helps to improve your business.

Learn about WP themes here:

• A Newbie’s Guide To Understanding WP Themes

WordPress – Modular Expansion

Another compelling reason to build your site using the WordPress CMS is that WordPress gives users almost unlimited functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

Plugins, like WP themes, integrate with your site to provide you with virtually unlimited flexibility.

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

Plugins can help you overcome these problems quite inexpensively. If there is a feature that needs to be in your site, just install a WordPress plugin that gets the job done.

Want a plugin that will let you know about any issues with your site like hyperlinks not working, videos not streaming, pictures that are missing or even tell you if your entire website has gone down? No problems … there are WordPress plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about problems so you can correct these immediately!

Need a plugin that will transform your website into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce system? Again, no problem! There are several inexpensive and easy-to-use WordPress plugins that will help you sell products online and provide your customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily select and add items to a cart, apply discount coupons, complete purchases using credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and email confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally thousands of great WP plugins that you can download and easily install on your website at $0 cost, or that you can buy for a small price, once again, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WP Plugins)

Learn more about WP plugins here:

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

WordPress – An Engaging Website User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful and exciting themes that cover all needs and applications and plugins that allow visitors to contact, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-driven website, WP themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a a highly interactive and engaging user experience that will keep visitors coming back to your site.

As stated earlier, consumers do extensive research online before they make purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed with customers in mind, these consumers will simply move on to another business with a better website.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website or blog please see our related posts section.

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