Are you missing out on customers because of poor web design? A poorly-built website could lose you many new customers.

In a world where first impressions matter, the look of your website is very important to the success of your business. Your website may be the first thing that a visitors see and this can influence their purchasing decision.

We typically mostly do it online. Even if it’s just for doing preliminary research, we still switch on our mobile device and go browse somebody’s web site first before buying something in-store or online.

Now, put yourself in your customer’s position. How does your web site appear to online users? Does your site invite them to enter and explore things further, or does it make them hesitant and unsure about what to do next?

What your prospective customers see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see on your screen) is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other things than can influence your web visitors’ perceptions and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Help Fix Your Poorly-Designed Website?

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

Web Design Problems

Common web design issues that can influence your potential customer’s perception of your site include:

• Color – Clashing color schemes can impact on your site’s results. This also applies to text and background color. There are ways to choose web colors correctly and even safe web colors you can use to make sure that the colors you select will display correctly across different devices. If in doubt, consult a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain unattractive, outdated or just plain old ugly visual elements can turn prospects off your site. Visitors can also be affected by subtle inconsistencies in the design elements or overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – The way your pages are structured can impact how users navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other useful objects.
• Responsiveness – As business information is now viewed by a range of devices with different-sized screens, it’s vitally important that the design of your website be fully responsive. If your web pages do not resize automatically to display your content across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you may lose potential customers.

Web Site Functionality Problems

Some of the most common website functionality problems can include:

• Frequent errors – A huge turn-off for users is arriving on a website where links don’t work, videos don’t play and graphics aren’t displaying. Subpar functionality is not acceptable, especially if you are trying to come across as a professional. Your website reflects your organization. It’s vitally important therefore, to make sure that all your links, videos, and graphics remain working all the time. In some cases, problems are caused by things such as your hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to ensure that you’re always proactive and that you attend to all problems immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your web site offers users specific functionalities, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you would like to sell products online, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily select and add items to a cart, enter discount coupons, purchase using a credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Invariably, where potential buyers suffer the most due to a poorly-constructed web 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 frustrations across social sites, user forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

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

• User-Friendly – Your website must be easy to use and intuitive to navigate around in. Your service information should not be hard to find. Your potential customers want user-friendly features and they want to find things quickly and with no hassle. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable information to your site (e.g. PDF reports), make sure that users are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organization – If your web site isn’t cleanly organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential buyers but current customers also. Providing features such as descriptive URLs, product and service categories and clean areas where related content is grouped or linked together can help provide users with an enjoyable experience.
• Eye-Catching Features – Users stay longer on websites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that provide them with stimulating options. This means aiming for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your website users. For example, highlight links which direct users to your product pages by inserting great product pictures next to well-crafted product descriptions. This can be very effective and can help improve not only the user experience on your site, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• Engaging Features – Another thing that helps users decide to stick around on your website is to provide interactive features that engage customers, like features that let them\visitors comment on, 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 … You also want visitors to be able to navigate quickly through your site and access your data without waiting around for pages to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Reassurance – One of the most important and often ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to make users feel comfortable doing business with you online. To reassure your visitors that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal pages such as a business information page, privacy statement, terms of usage, security information, FTC 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 website is poorly built, you run the serious risk of not only losing potential customers but also some of existing customers as well.

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

First, keep in mind that getting issues addressed on an existing site can take some time and can also end up being somewhat costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you currently have, especially if it requires extensive coding.

If you are researching the process of getting 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 share a lot more information about WordPress on this site, but here are just some of the things to keep in mind about why you should consider WordPress:

Themes – Inexpensive Web Design

WordPress themes are unique web site design template systems that let you quickly customize the look and feel of your site without affecting the website’s content and modifying any of the core software.

There are literally thousands of professional looking themes built for WordPress available that can be easily downloaded. Many themes are either free of charge, or they can be purchased relatively cheaply, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes nowadays are fully responsive and provide website owners with flexible and customizable options for changing your site’s design such as the color, template elements like headers and footers, layouts and more. Themes are just part of what makes WordPress such a powerful tool for helping you create a design for your website that helps to improve your business.

Learn about themes here:

• WordPress For Business – An Overview Of WP Themes

WordPress Plugins – Virtually Unlimited Features

Another great reason to choose WordPress is that WordPress provides you with powerful functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

Plugins, like WP themes, integrate with your website to provide you with virtually unlimited features and new functionality.

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

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

Need a plugin that will let you know about any problems on your website like hyperlinks not working, videos not streaming, graphics that aren’t displaying or even alert you if your entire site is down? No problems … there are 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 system? Again, no problem! There are several WP plugins that will help you sell goods or services online and provide your users with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to choose and add products to a shopping cart, apply coupons, purchase using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are thousands of useful WP plugins that you can download and install on your website at $0 cost, or that are relatively inexpensive and will save you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WP Plugins)

You can learn more about plugins here:

• Add New Functionality To Your Website With Plugins

WordPress – An Enhanced 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 customers.

WordPress provides beautiful and visually-exciting themes that cover all types of uses and feature-rich plugins that allow customers to contact, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-powered site, WP themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a rich and engaging user experience that will keep people coming back for more.

As stated earlier, consumers do research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rich and engaging user experience, your potential buyers will simply move on to another business that does provide them with 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 build a better online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business web site please see our related posts section.

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