Are you losing customers because of poor web design? A poorly-constructed web site could end up costing you valuable business.

In a world where attractive things matter, how your web site looks can play a significant role in your business success. Your website is the first thing that your web visitors see and this could influence their purchasing decision.

Think about how most people do research about products and services nowadays. Even if it’s only for doing preliminary research, we may jump online and go browse someone’s website first before buying something in-store or online.

Now, try to see things from your customer’s viewpoint. How does your digital presence appear to online users? Does your site invite them to enter and explore things further, or does it make people confused and cautious about where to go next?

What web visitors see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see in your screen) is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can influence your visitors’ thoughts and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Fix Bad Web Design?

Here are just some key design problems that can affect your web site:

Web Design Problems

Some of the most common design problems that can impact your visitor’s perception of your website include some following:

• Color – Clashing color schemes affect your site’s results. This also applies to text and background color. There are methods to specify web colors correctly and even safe web colors you can use to make sure that the color schemes you want to use will display consistently across different systems. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain unattractive, outdated and just plain hard to read fonts can result in users quickly losing interest in off your site. Visitors can also be affected by careless inconsistencies in the design elements or overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you structure your page content can significantly impact how visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational menus, links, and other objects.
• Responsiveness – Since digital information is now accessed by various devices with different-sized screens and browsers, it’s important that the design of your website be fully responsive. If your web pages do not resize automatically to display your information across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you could experience potential loss of customers.

Functionality Problems

Common website functionality issues may include:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is arriving on a website where links don’t work, videos don’t play and images aren’t showing. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable, especially when your goal is to come across professionally. Your digital presence reflects your business. It’s vitally important therefore, to make sure that all your links, videos, and images are working at all times. In some cases, these issues may be related to 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 get issues fixed immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your website provides users certain functionality, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you intend to sell goods or services on your site, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily choose and add items to a cart, enter coupons, pay with credit cards or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Typically, where visitors suffer the most because of a poorly-built site is the “user experience”.

Anything less than a great user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead to venting their dissatisfaction in social media, forums, review sites, commenting sections, etc ….

Some common issues that can create a disappointing user experience include:

• User-Friendly – Your website should be user-friendly. Information about your products and services should not be kept in obscure corners. 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 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 prospective buyers but also existing clients. Having features such as search engine-friendly URLs, product and service categories and sections where related content is grouped or linked together will provide users with a good user experience.
• Stimulating Site – Users stick around on websites that are user friendly, well organized, and that provide them with stimulating options. This means finding a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling web copy that engages your users. For example, highlight hyperlinks which lead to product pages by inserting beautiful graphics alongside well-written product descriptions. This is effective and can help improve not only the user experience on your website, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• Interactive Features – Another thing that helps visitors want to stay longer on your website is providing interactive features that engage your visitors, such as allowing them to leave comments, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your support staff via a responsive helpdesk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … Additionally, you want users to navigate quickly around your site and access your information without waiting around for content to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Compliance – 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 web visitors that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your site includes legal pages such as a business contact page, privacy policy, terms of use, security information, earnings disclaimers, etc.

(Web design issues)

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 site is poorly designed, you run the serious risk of not only losing prospective clients but also some of existing clients as well.

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

First, understand that getting a website overhaul can take time and can also be somewhat costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you currently own, especially if the work requires a lot of code writing.

If you are in the process of having a new website developed or upgrading an existing website, then we suggest that you consider using the WordPress web publishing platform.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We currently share more in-depth posts about WordPress on this site, but here are just some key points to keep in mind about why you should choose WordPress:

Themes – Flexible Web Design

WP themes are unique web design template systems that enable you to quickly change the look and feel of your entire site without touching the site’s content and modifying any underlying software functionality.

There are literally thousands of professional themes for WordPress site owners available that you can download and easily install on your website. Many themes are either free of charge, or are extremely affordable, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes nowadays are responsive and provide users with customizable features for changing your website’s design like the color, template elements like menus and headers, page 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.

Learn about themes here:

• WP Themes – An Overview

WordPress – Virtually Unlimited Expansion

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

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

Earlier we discussed issues like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly constructed website can lose you money.

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

Want a plugin that will let you know about any issues on your website such as links not working, videos not playing, pictures that are missing or even tell you if your whole web site has gone down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about problems so you can correct these immediately!

Need a plugin that will let you turn your website 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 on your site and provide your customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily select and add products to a shopping cart, apply coupons, complete purchases using credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and email confirmations, etc.

And just like WP themes, there are tens of thousands of great plugins that can be downloaded free of charge, or are extremely affordable, once again, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WordPress Plugins)

You can learn more about plugins here:

• WP Plugins – Improving Your Blog’s Features

WordPress – An Enhanced Website User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and exciting themes that cover all needs and applications and functional plugins that allow customers to contact, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-driven site, WordPress themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a rich user experience that will keep users coming back to your site.

As stated earlier, consumers nowadays will do extensive research online before making purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rich user experience, your potential customers will not return and simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website and better user experience.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you expand your business business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website please click on links to visit our related posts section.

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