Are you losing prospects because of poor web design? A poorly-constructed web site could lose you valuable business.

In a world where first impressions matter, the design of your website can contribute significantly to the success of your business. Your website is probably the first thing that your potential buyers see and this could affect their purchasing decision.

People are turning more than ever to the internet to find products and services. Even if it’s just for preliminary research, we will probably switch to our smart phone and go browse someone’s web site first before purchasing products in-store or online.

Now, try to see things from your visitor’s point of view. How does your digital presence appear to visitors? Does your site invite them to draw closer and explore things further, or does it make them confused and unsure about what to do next?

What your potential buyers 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’ experience and their decision to ultimately purchase from you.

Can WordPress Fix Poor Web Design?

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

Website Design Issues

Common web design problems that can impact your prospect’s perception about your site include some or all of the following:

• Color – Bad color combinations affect your results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are ways to specify web colors correctly and even safe web color tools you can use to make sure that the palettes you choose will display correctly across various systems. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically unexciting, outdated or just plain old ugly images can result in users quickly losing interest in away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic elements or overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you structure your pages can significantly impact the way users navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigation menus, links, and other useful objects.
• Responsiveness – As business information is now accessed by various devices with different-sized screens, it’s important that the design of your website be responsive. If your website does not resize automatically to display your content across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you may incur business opportunity losses.

Site Functionality Problems

Common functionality problems include:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is arriving on a website where hyperlinks don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics are missing. Subpar functionality is not acceptable in a website, especially when you are trying to come across as a professional. Your website is a reflection of your company. It’s vitally important to make sure that all your links, videos, and images remain up and running all the time. In some cases, problems may be caused by external factors such as your hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to make sure that you’re consistently proactive and that you attend to problems as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your web site offers visitors specific features, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you intend to sell products on your site, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to select and add items to a cart, use coupons, complete their orders with credit cards or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Typically, where your business suffers most noticeably due to a poorly-built site is the “user experience”.

An unsatisfactory user experience can leave a bad taste in users mouths and lead them to share their disappointment on social networks, forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

Here are just some of the most common issues that can create a poor user experience:

• User-Friendly – Your website must be easy to use and easy to navigate around in. Information about your products and services should not be kept in obscure places. Your visitors want user-friendly features and they want to find things quickly and with minimal hassle. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable files to your site (e.g. videos), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organized – If your site isn’t well organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential customers but current clients too. Things like descriptive links, product and service categories and sections where related content can be easily found will provide visitors with a good experience.
• Stimulating Features – Visitors want sites that are user friendly, well organized, and that are eye-catching. This means striving for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your website users. For example, highlight links which lead to your product pages by inserting eye-popping product images alongside well-written descriptions. This is effective and can help improve not just the user experience on your site, but can also help you generate more sales and conversions.
• User Interactivity – Another thing that helps to improve user experience on your site is providing interactive features that engage your customers, like the ability to comment on, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your staff via a responsive helpdesk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … You also want visitors to navigate quickly through your site and access your information without waiting around for content to load, so having your site optimized for page loading speed is important.
• Trustworthy Site – One of the most important and often most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to ensure that users feel confident doing business 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 statement, terms and conditions of usage, 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 results online. If your website is poorly constructed, you run the risk of not only losing prospective paying customers but also existing clients too.

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

First, understand that getting issues fixed on an existing website can take some time and can also be quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you currently have, especially if what needs doing requires extensive web development.

If you are researching the process of having a new website developed or upgrading an existing web site, then we suggest that you consider building or redesigning your site with the WordPress web content management platform.

(WordPress can help to improve your website results!)

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

WordPress Themes – Unique Web Site Design Features

WordPress themes are unique website design templates that let you completely modify the look and feel of your entire website without affecting the site’s content and modifying any of the core software.

There are thousands of professional looking WP themes available that can be easily downloaded. Many of these are either free, or they are extremely well priced, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes for WordPress are responsive and provide site owners with customizable features for changing design settings of your website such as color, template elements like menus and headers, layouts and more. Themes are just part of what makes WordPress an ideal tool for helping you create a design for your website that works for your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• WP For Beginners – An Overview Of WP Themes

WordPress – Modular Scalability

Another compelling reason to build your site using the WP website publishing platform is that WordPress provides website owners with expandable features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

Plugins, like themes, integrate with your site to provide you with almost unlimited flexibility.

Earlier we discussed issues like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly designed web site can cost you customers.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a functionality that needs to be integrated with your website, just install a WP plugin that will do exactly what you need to get things done.

Need a plugin that will let you know about any problems on your website such as links not working, videos not streaming, graphics that are missing or even tell you if your entire web site is down? No problems … there are WP plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about problems 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 inexpensive plugins that will help you sell goods or services online and provide your visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily choose and add products to a shopping cart, apply coupons, pay using credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts and email confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally thousands of great plugins that you can install on your site and are freely available, or 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:

• Add New Functionality To Your WP Site With Plugins

WordPress – A Rich Website User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful, professional and exciting themes that cover all kinds of uses and applications and functional plugins that allow web users to contact, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-powered website, WordPress themes, plugins and great content, you can create a a highly interactive and engaging user experience that will keep visitors returning again and again.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers nowadays will do research online before they make purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed with customers in mind, these consumers will simply move on to another business that does provide them with a better website.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about using the WordPress website management software please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.

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