Are you losing customers because of poor web design? A poorly-constructed website can lose you valuable business.

In a world where looks matter, the design of your website can be important to your business success. Your website may be the first thing that your visitors see and this could affect their purchasing decision.

Think about how you research services nowadays. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we still fire up our laptop and go visit a web site first before buying goods in-store or online.

Now, put yourself in your customer’s position. How does your website appear to visitors? Does it invite them to come and explore things further, or does it make them hesitant 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 influence your web visitors’ thoughts and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Help Fix Bad Web Design?

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

Website Design Issues

Some of the most common design problems that can influence a visitor’s perception about your site include some or all of the following:

• Color – Poor color combinations affect your results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are methods to choose web colors correctly and even safe web color tools you can use to ensure that the colors you use will display consistently across various web formats. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically boring, outdated or just plain old hard to read typefaces can result in users quickly losing interest in away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic element choices and excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you lay out your pages can affect the way visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigational menus, links, and other objects.
• Responsiveness – As information is now accessed using a range of devices with different-sized screens and browsers, it’s vitally important that the design of your website be responsive. If your web pages do not resize automatically to fit your content across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you could incur significant business opportunity losses.

Functionality Issues

Common functionality issues include the following:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for users is landing on a site where hyperlinks don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics are missing. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable, especially when you are trying to come across as a professional and reliable business. Your website reflects your organization. It’s important therefore, to make sure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and images are working all the time. Sometimes, these issues are caused by factors such as your 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 as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your website offers visitors certain features or functionalities, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you would like to sell products online, make sure that you provide users with full e-commerce features that allow them to choose and add products to a cart, apply discounts, complete purchases using a credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

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

An unpleasant user experience can leave a bad taste in users mouths and lead them to share their frustrations on social media, forums, review sites, commenting sections, etc ….

Some of the more common problems that can lead to a disappointing user experience can include:

• Ease Of Use – Your site needs to be user-friendly. Your service information should be easy to locate. Your customers 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 files to your site (e.g. presentation slides), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organization – If your site content isn’t well organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential clients but existing clients as well. Features like search engine-friendly URLs, product and service categories and sections where related content is grouped or linked together can provide users with a good experience.
• Eye-Catching Site – Users stick around on websites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that provide them with stimulating options. To achieve this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling web copy that engages your visitors. For example, highlight links pointing to product pages by inserting professionally-taken images with well-written descriptions. This is very effective and can help you improve not only the user experience on your website, but can also help you get more sales and conversions.
• Engaging Features – Another aspect that helps to improve user experience on your website is to provide interactive features that engage users, like features that let users 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 … Additionally, you want visitors to browse quickly within your site and access your data without waiting around for pages to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Compliant Site – One of the most important and often neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that users feel comfortable interacting with you online. To reassure your visitors that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your website includes legal compliance pages like a business information page, privacy policy, terms of usage, security information, FTC 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 results online. If your web site is poorly constructed, you run the serious risk of not only losing prospective clients but also existing customers as well.

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

First, be aware that getting problems addressed on an existing site can take time and can also be quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you operate, especially if what needs doing requires extensive code modification.

If you are considering having a new website built or overhauling an existing website, then we suggest that you seriously consider choosing WordPress.

(WordPress can improve your website results!)

We currently publish more in-depth posts about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress on this site, but here are just some of the things to keep in mind about why you should use WordPress:

WordPress – Customizable Website Design

WordPress themes are unique web site design templates that let you quickly change the look and feel of your site in minutes.

There are thousands of professional looking themes available that you can install on your site. Many themes are either free, or they can be purchased for a relatively inexpensive cost, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WP Themes)

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

You can learn about themes here:

• A Basic Guide To Understanding Themes

WordPress – Virtually Unlimited Scalability

Another great reason to choose the WP web site publishing software is that WordPress gives users almost unlimited functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

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

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

Plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite inexpensively. If there is a feature that needs to be integrated with your site, just install a WP plugin that gets what you need done.

Need a plugin that will notify you about any problems on your site such as links not working, videos not playing, graphics that are missing or even alert you if your whole website has gone down? No problems … there are WordPress plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about issues so you can take immediate corrective action!

Need a plugin that will transform your site into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce business solution? Again, no problem! There are several inexpensive and easy-to-use plugins that will help you sell products online and provide your customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to choose and add items to a cart, enter coupons, purchase using credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and email confirmations, etc.

And just like WordPress themes, there are thousands of great plugins for WordPress site owners that you can install on your site and are freely available, or you can purchase for a small cost and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WP Plugins)

You can learn more about WordPress plugins here:

• WP Plugins Expand Your Web Site’s Capabilities

WordPress – A Rich User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful, professional 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 site, WP themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a very rich and enhanced user experience that will keep users coming back to your site.

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

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you improve your business business online. To learn more about using WordPress please see other posts we have published on this site.

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