Are you missing out on business because of a poorly-designed website? Regardless of how professional your company is, a poorly-constructed website can end up costing you valuable business.

In a world where the way we project ourselves matter, the way your website looks is becoming more important to the success of your business. Your website is probably the first thing that a web visitors see and this can affect their decision to use your services.

We mostly do things online. Even if it’s just doing preliminary research, we will typically jump online and go browse somebody’s website before taking the next step.

Now, put yourself in your prospect’s position. How does your web site appear to others? Does it invite people to enter and explore things further, or does it make people hesitant and cautious about where to go next?

What your 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 web visitors’ thoughts and their decision to ultimately buy from you.

Can WordPress Fix Bad Web Design?

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

Website Design Issues

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

• Color – Clashing color schemes affect your results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are methods that can help you 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 web formats. If in doubt, seek the services of a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain aesthetically unattractive, outdated or just plain old hard to read fonts can result in users quickly losing interest in off your site. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic element choices or overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – How your content is structured can impact how users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigational items, links, and other useful objects.
• Responsiveness – As information is now accessed by various devices with different-sized screens, it’s vitally important that your web design be fully responsive. If your website does not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you could incur business losses.

Web Site Functionality Problems

Common functionality issues include the following:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is arriving on a site where links don’t work, videos don’t play and images aren’t showing. Frequent site errors are not acceptable, especially when you are trying to come across professionally. Your digital presence is a reflection of your company. It’s important therefore, to ensure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and images are up and running all the time. Sometimes, problems may be related to factors such as your hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to make sure that remain proactive and that you get problems corrected immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your web site offers users certain functionalities, then make sure that these functionalities are not limited. For example, if you would like to sell goods or services online, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily select and add items to a cart, apply discounts, purchase with credit cards or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Normally, where your business suffers most noticeably because of a poorly-built site is in the realm of the “user experience”.

Anything less than a great user experience can leave a bad taste in users mouths and lead to venting their disappointment on social media, forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

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

• Ease Of Use – Your website must be user-friendly. Your product information should not be kept in obscure places. Your customers want user-friendly features and they want to find what they are looking for quickly and without disappointment. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable information 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 website isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective clients but also current clients. Things such as search engine-friendly links, product and service categories and well-organized areas where your content is grouped or linked together will help provide visitors with an enjoyable experience.
• Stimulating Web Site – Visitors stick around on sites that are user friendly, well organized, and that are eye-catching and stimulating. This requires finding a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your website users. For example, highlight links which direct customers to product pages with professionally-taken graphics next to well-crafted descriptions. This is effective and will help improve not only the user experience on your site, but can also help you generate more sales and conversions.
• User Engagement Features – Another aspect that helps to improve user experience on your site is to provide interactive features that engage your users, such as features that let them\visitors comment on, 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 website and access your data without waiting around for content to load, so site loading optimization is important.
• Trustworthy Site – One of the most important and often most neglected 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 company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your site includes legal pages like a business contact page, privacy statement, terms of usage, security information, FTC disclaimers, etc.

(Website design problems)

As you can see, there are many areas that can contribute to a poor user experience and negatively impact your business success online. If your web site is poorly built, you run the risk of not only losing potential customers but also existing clients as well.

Now … what if you have arrived on this website because you currently have an existing website with design problems that are affecting your business?

First, be aware that getting a complete website overhaul can take some time and can be fairly costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you operate, especially if what needs doing requires extensive web development.

If you are researching the process of having a new website developed or redesigning an existing site, then we suggest that you seriously consider choosing the WordPress website publishing platform.

(WordPress can improve your website results!)

We currently publish more in-depth posts about WordPress on this site, but here are just a few things to keep in mind about why you should seriously consider using WordPress:

WordPress Themes – Unique Web Site Design Features

WordPress themes are unique web design templates that let you immediately customize the look of your site without affecting the site’s content and changing any of the underlying software.

There are literally thousands of professional looking themes for WordPress available that you can install on your website. Many of these are either freely available, or are extremely affordable, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes for WordPress nowadays are fully responsive and provide you with customizable options for changing design settings of your site like color, elements like headers and footers, layouts and more. This is just part of what makes WordPress such a great tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that ultimately works for your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• Themes – An Overview

WordPress – Powerful Functionality

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

WordPress plugins, like themes, integrate with your site to provide you with virtually unlimited scalability.

Earlier we discussed issues like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly designed web site could end up losing you money.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues quite inexpensively. If there is a feature you would like to add to your site, just install a plugin that will help you get what you need done.

Need a plugin that will let you know about any problems detected with your website such as hyperlinks not working, audios not streaming, graphics that aren’t showing or even alert you if your entire web site has gone down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about problems so you can correct these immediately!

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

And just like WordPress themes, there are thousands of great WordPress plugins that can be easily downloaded at no cost, or that are extremely affordable, once again, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WordPress Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• Adding New Functionality To Your Site With Plugins

WordPress – An Enhanced Web User Experience

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

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

As stated earlier, consumers do extensive research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rewarding user experience, these consumers will simply move on to another business with a better website.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you improve your business business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website or blog please see our related posts section.

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