Are you missing out on prospects because of poor web design? Regardless of how strong your services are, a poorly-built website can cost you many new customers.

In a world where aesthetic principles matter, how your web site looks can play a significant role in your business success. Your website is the first thing that your potential customer sees and this could influence their purchasing decision.

We do it online. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we will jump online and go browse a web site before deciding what to do next.

Now, try to see things from your customer’s perspective. How does your web site appear to other people? Does your site invite them to enter and explore things further, or does it make them hesitant and cautious about where to go next?

How your website looks is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other factors than can affect your visitors’ perceptions and their decision to ultimately purchase from you.

Can WordPress Help You Fix Poor Web Design?

Let’s review some key design problems that can affect your website’s results and performance:

Site Design Issues

Common design problems that can influence your user’s perception of your website include:

• Color – Unattractive color schemes can impact on your results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are ways to pick web colors correctly and even safe web color tools you can use to ensure that the color combinations you decide on will display consistently across various devices. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain unpleasant, outdated or just plain hard to read text can result in visitors quickly losing interest in off your website. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic element choices or excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you lay out your page content can impact how users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational menus, links, and other useful objects.
• Responsiveness – As websites are now accessed by a range of devices with different-sized screens and browsers, it’s vitally important that your website’s design be responsive. If your website does not display well across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will lose potential opportunities.

Functionality Problems

Some of the most common functionality issues include:

• Persistent errors – A huge turn-off for visitors is arriving on a page where links don’t work, videos can’t play and images aren’t displaying. Frequent site errors are no longer acceptable, especially when your aim is to come across as a professional and reliable business. Your website is a reflection of your business. It’s important therefore, to ensure that all your links, videos, and graphics are running smoothly all the time. In some cases, these problems are related to factors such as your web hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to ensure that you’re consistently proactive and that you attend to problems as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your web site offers visitors certain features, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you want to sell goods or services online, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add items to a cart, enter discount codes, order with credit cards or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Typically, the area that is most affected because of a poorly-constructed website is in the realm of the “user experience”.

An unsatisfactory user experience can leave a bad taste in users mouths and lead to sharing their dissatisfaction in social sites, forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

Common problems that can create a disappointing user experience include:

• User-Friendly – Your website should be easy to use and intuitive to navigate around in. Your product information 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 content to your site (e.g. PDF price lists), make sure that users 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 existing clients as well. Features like search engine-friendly links, product and service categories and sections where related content is grouped or linked together can help provide visitors with an enjoyable user experience.
• Eye-Catching Features – Users stay longer on sites that are user friendly, well organized, and that are eye-catching. This means striking a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your website users. For example, draw attention to hyperlinks pointing to product pages by inserting beautiful images alongside well-written product descriptions. This can be very effective and will help improve not just the user experience on your site, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• User Interactivity – Another aspect that helps to improve user experience on your website is providing interactive features that engage your users, such as allowing them to 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 users to move quickly through your site and access your information without waiting around for content to load, so site loading optimization is important.
• Trustworthy Website – One of the most important and often ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that users feel comfortable interacting with you online. To reassure your prospective clients that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your website includes legal pages like a business contact page, privacy statement, terms and conditions of usage, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(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 website isn’t designed in a user-friendly way, you run the serious risk of not only losing prospective clients but also some of current clients as well.

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

First, understand that getting a complete website overhaul can take time and can also be quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you have, especially if what needs doing requires a lot of code writing.

If you are currently in the process of having a new website developed or redeveloping an existing website, then we suggest that you consider choosing WordPress.

(WordPress can help to improve your website results!)

We currently publish more information about WordPress on this site, but here are just some things to keep in mind about why you should seriously consider using WordPress:

WordPress Themes – Unique Web Design Features

WP themes are unique web site design template systems that let you quickly modify the look of your entire website in minutes.

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

(WP Themes)

Most themes nowadays are fully responsive and provide you with flexible and customizable options for changing your website’s design settings such as the color, template elements like menus and headers, 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 helps your business.

You can learn about WordPress themes here:

• WordPress For Newbies – An Introduction To Themes

WordPress – Virtually Unlimited Functionality

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

Plugins, like themes, integrate with your website to provide you with almost unlimited functionality.

Earlier we talked about areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly constructed web site can cost you customers.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues quite easily. If there is a feature that needs to be added to your site, just install a plugin that does exactly what you need to get things done.

Need a plugin that will notify you immediately about any issues with your website such as hyperlinks not working, videos not streaming, pictures that aren’t displaying or even tell you if your entire web site has gone down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about issues so you can correct these immediately!

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 plugins that will help you sell products on your site and provide your visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add items to a cart, use discount codes, complete purchases with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are tens of thousands of fantastic plugins for WordPress that you can install on your site free of charge, or that are extremely well priced and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WP Plugins)

You can learn more about WordPress plugins here:

• Add New Features And Functionality To Your Website With Plugins

WordPress – An Immediate Web User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful, professional and exciting themes that cover all needs and uses and functional plugins that allow website users to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-powered website, WP themes, plugins and great content, you can create a rich and enhanced user experience that will keep users returning again and again.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers will do extensive research online before making purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed with a focus on the customer, 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 web site and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website or blog please see our related posts section.

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