Are you missing out on customers because of poor web design? No matter how professional your company is, a poorly-built web site can lose you valuable business.

In a world where attractive design sells, the design of your website can play a significant part in the success of your business. Your website is the first thing that a web visitors see and this could affect their decision to do business with you.

People are turning to the internet to find products and services. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we will typically turn on our mobile phone and go visit someone’s website first before purchasing products in-store or online.

Now, put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. How does your website appear to other people? Does it invite them to enter and explore things further, or does it make them confused and cautious about what to do next?

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

Can WordPress Help You Fix A Poorly-Designed Website?

Let’s review some of the more important design problems that can affect your web site:

Web Site Design Issues

Some of the most common web design problems that can impact a potential customer’s perception of your site include:

• Color – Clashing color schemes can affect your results. This also applies to text and background color. There are tools that can help you specify web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to help make sure that the palettes you decide on will display consistently across different devices. If in doubt, seek the services of a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain aesthetically unattractive, outdated and just plain hard to read text can turn visitors away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by overall design inconsistencies and excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you structure your pages can impact the way visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigation items, links, and other elements are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, content columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – As information is now accessed using various devices with different-sized screens and browsers, it’s important that the design of your website be responsive. If your web pages do not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you may lose customers.

Functionality Issues

Some common website functionality problems include the following:

• Frequent website errors – A huge turn-off for visitors is arriving on a website where some links don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics are missing. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable in any website, especially if you are trying to come across as a professional. Your web presence reflects your business. It’s vitally important therefore, to make sure that all your links, videos, and images are running smoothly all the time. Sometimes, problems could be related to things like your web hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to ensure that remain proactive and that all problems are repaired as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your business offers users specific functionalities, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you intend to sell products online, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily select and add products to a cart, enter discounts, purchase using 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-constructed site is in the realm of the “user experience”.

A disappointing user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead to venting their dissatisfaction on social networks, forums, review sites, comments, etc., bringing you negative publicity.

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

• User-Friendly – Your site must be user-friendly. Your service information should not be hard to find. Your web visitors 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 files to your site (e.g. forms and documents), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organization – If your web site isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective buyers but also current customers. Features like descriptive URLs, product and service categories and clean areas where related content is grouped or linked together can help provide visitors with an enjoyable experience.
• Compelling Web Site – Visitors want websites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that are eye-catching. To accomplish this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your website users. For example, draw attention to hyperlinks that lead to product pages with professionally-taken product pictures next to well-written product descriptions. This is effective and can help you improve not just the user experience on your site, but can also lead to more sales and conversions.
• Engaging Features – Another area that helps visitors want to stick around on your site is providing interactive features that engage visitors, such as the ability to leave comments, 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 … You also want visitors to browse quickly within your website 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 ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to ensure that users feel confident doing business with you online. To reassure your web visitors that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your website includes legal pages such as a business information page, privacy statement, terms and conditions of use, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(Web design problems)

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 site is poorly built, you run the risk of not only losing potential customers but also existing clients too.

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

First, keep in mind 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 currently have, especially if the work requires a lot of web coding.

If you are considering having a new website developed or redeveloping an existing site, then we suggest that you seriously consider building or redesigning your site with the WordPress web publishing platform.

(WordPress can improve your website results!)

We plan to share a lot more information about the benefits and advantages of WordPress on this site, but here are just a few key points to keep in mind about why you should seriously choose WordPress:

WordPress – Instant Web Site Design

WP themes are unique website design templates that allow you to completely change the look of your entire website without touching the site’s content or modifying any core site functionality.

There are thousands of professional WP themes available that can be downloaded. Many of these are either free of charge, or are relatively inexpensive, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most WordPress themes nowadays are fully responsive and provide users with flexible and customizable options for changing the design of your site such as color, elements like menus, headers, footers, page layouts and more. Themes are just one of the many things that make WordPress an ideal tool for helping you create a design for your website that works for your business.

Learn about WP themes here:

• Themes – An Overview

WP Plugins – Powerful Scalability

Another great reason to build your site using WordPress is that WordPress provides you with expandable functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

WP plugins, like WordPress themes, integrate easily with your site to provide you with almost unlimited expansion.

Earlier in this article we talked about issues in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly designed website can end up costing you customers.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite inexpensively. If there is a functionality you need integrated into your site, just install a plugin that does what you need done.

Need a plugin that will notify you immediately about any problems detected with your site like hyperlinks not working, videos not streaming, images that aren’t displaying or even tell you if your whole website is 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 turn your website 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 online and provide your visitors with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily choose and add products to a cart, enter discount coupons, purchase with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and email confirmations, etc.

And just like WP themes, there are thousands of useful plugins created for WordPress users that you can download and easily install on your site at $0 cost, or you can purchase for a inexpensive cost and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WP Plugins)

You can learn more about WP plugins here:

• WP Plugins Expand Your Website’s Capability

WordPress – A Rich User Experience

In addition to being able to correct issues caused by a poorly-built website, WordPress can also help you create a great user experience for your customers.

WordPress provides beautiful and visually-exciting themes that cover all types of uses and applications and plugins that allow customers to contact, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-powered website, WordPress themes, plugins and great content, you can create a rich user experience that will keep people returning to your site.

As stated earlier, consumers will do research online before they make purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed with a focus on the customer, these prospective customers will simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website.

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

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