Are you missing out on customers because of a poorly-constructed site? A poorly-built web site could end up costing you valuable business.

In a world where beautiful design matters, the look of your web site is becoming more important to the success of your business. Your website may be the first thing that your potential buyers see and this can influence their purchasing decision.

People are turning more and more to the internet to find products and services. Even if it’s just for preliminary research, we still turn on our mobile device and go visit someone’s site first before purchasing something in-store or online.

Now, put yourself in your prospect’s position. How does your web presence appear to them? Does it invite people to enter and explore things further, or does it make people hesitant and cautious about where to go next?

The way your site looks is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other factors than can influence your web visitors’ perceptions and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Help Fix Poor Web Design?

Here are just some of the key design issues that can affect your web site’s results and performance:

Website Design Problems

Typical web design issues that can impact your user’s perception about your site include:

• Color – Poor color combinations affect your site’s results. This also applies to text and background color. There are tools to choose web colors correctly and even safe web colors you can use to make sure that the color schemes you want to use will display predictably across various devices. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically boring, outdated or just plain old ugly visual elements can easily turn prospective clients away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by subtle inconsistencies in the design elements and overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – How your content is structured can have an impact effect on the way users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigation items, links, and other objects.
• Responsiveness – Since websites are now viewed using 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 on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you may experience potential business opportunity losses.

Website Functionality Problems

Common website functionality problems may include:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for users is landing on a website where some links don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics are missing. Subpar functionality is not acceptable on any website, especially if your aim is to come across professionally. Your website is a reflection of your organization. It’s vitally important therefore, to make sure that all your links, videos, and graphics are running smoothly all the time. Sometimes, these problems may be 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 all problems immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your website offers users certain functionalities, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you want to sell products on your site, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add items to a shopping cart, enter discount coupons, buy using credit cards or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Invariably, where your business suffers most noticeably because of a poorly-designed web site is in the realm of the “user experience”.

An unsatisfactory user experience can leave a bad taste in visitors’ mouths and lead them to share their frustrations across social media, forums, review sites, commenting sections, etc ….

Typical issues that can create a disappointing user experience include the following:

• Ease Of Use – Your site needs to be easy to use and easy to navigate. Your service information should not be hard to find. Your customers 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 content to your site (e.g. spreadsheets), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organization – If your site content isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective clients but also existing clients. Having features such as descriptive URLs, product and service categories and sections where related content is grouped or linked together can provide visitors with an enjoyable user experience.
• Compelling Site – Users want sites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that are stimulating. This means aiming for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your website users. For example, highlight links that direct customers to product pages with eye-popping graphics and well-crafted product descriptions. This is effective and can help improve not just the user experience on your website, but can also help you generate more sales and conversions.
• Interactive Features – Another area that helps visitors want to stick around on your site is to provide interactive features that engage your users, like 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 users to move quickly around your site and access your information without waiting around for pages to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Compliance – One of the most important and often most ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that users feel comfortable interacting with you online. To reassure your prospective customers that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal compliance pages like a business contact page, privacy statement, terms of usage, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(Web site design problems)

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 risk of not only losing prospective customers but also some of existing clients too.

Now … what if you have arrived here because you have an existing site with design issues that are affecting your business?

First, keep in mind that getting a website overhaul can take some time and can end up being quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you own, especially if what needs doing requires a lot of web code editing.

If you are currently in the process of getting a new website developed or upgrading an existing site, then we recommend that you consider using WordPress.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We plan to provide a lot more posts about WordPress on this site, but here are just some of the things to keep in mind about why you should seriously consider using WordPress:

Themes – Unique Website Design Features

WP themes are unique website design templates that enable you to instantly change the look and feel of your website without touching the website’s content and modifying any of the underlying site functionality.

There are literally thousands of professional looking themes for WordPress site owners available that can be easily downloaded. Many themes are either free of charge, or are relatively inexpensive, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes designed for WordPress nowadays are fully responsive and provide website owners with highly customizable options for changing your website’s design settings like color, template elements like menus and headers, layouts and more. This is just one of the many things that make WordPress such a powerful tool for helping you create a design for your website that ultimately helps to improve your business.

You can learn about WordPress themes here:

• WP Themes – An Overview

WordPress – Powerful Scalability

Another compelling reason to build your site using the WordPress web content publishing software is that WordPress gives site owners powerful features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

Plugins, like themes, integrate with your website to provide you with virtually unlimited scalability.

Earlier we discussed issues like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built web site can end up losing you money.

WP plugins can help you overcome these problems quite inexpensively. If there is a functionality that you want to add to your site, just install a WP plugin that will get things done.

Need a plugin that will let you know about any issues detected on your website such as links not working, audios not playing, pictures that are missing or even alert you if your entire web site is down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about issues so you can correct these immediately!

Need a plugin that will transform 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 WordPress plugins that will help you sell products online and provide your users with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily choose and add products to a cart, use discount coupons, purchase with credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like WP themes, there are literally tens of thousands of fantastic plugins designed for WordPress site owners that can be easily downloaded free of charge, or that are extremely affordable, once again, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WP Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• Adding New Features And Functionality To Your Website With Plugins

WordPress – An Interactive Website User Experience

In addition to being able to address issues caused by a poorly-built website, WordPress can also help you give your visitors a great user experience.

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and visually-exciting themes that cover all types of uses and applications and feature-rich plugins that allow web visitors to contact, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress website, WordPress themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a very rich and enhanced user experience that will keep your visitors coming back again and again.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers nowadays will do research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed with the customer in mind, they will not return and simply move on to another business that does provide them with a better website and website experience.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you expand your business business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website or blog please see other posts we have published on this site.

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