Are you missing out on customers because of poor web design? A poorly-designed website could end up losing you valuable business.

In a world where beautiful design matters, your website’s design can be very important to your business success. Your website is probably the first thing that a web visitor sees and this can affect their purchasing decision.

We typically mostly do things online. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we will jump online and go visit a website first before purchasing products in-store or online.

Now, try to see things from your prospect’s point of view. How does your web site appear to visitors? Does your site invite people to come and explore things further, or does it make people hesitant and cautious about what to do next?

The way your website looks is only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can affect your web visitors’ perceptions and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Fix Poor Web Design?

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

Web Site Design Issues

Some of the most common design issues that can impact your potential customer’s perception about your website include some or all of the following:

• Color – Unattractive color schemes affect your results. This also applies to using text and background color. There are methods to pick web colors correctly and even safe web color palettes to help make sure that the palettes you select will display predictably across different devices. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain visually unpleasant, outdated and just plain hard to read typefaces can turn visitors off your website. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic elements or overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – How your site is structured can have a significant effect on the way visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other useful objects.
• Responsiveness – As information is now viewed by various devices with different-sized screens and browsers, it’s vitally important that the design of your website be fully responsive. If your website does not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you may lose opportunities.

Functionality Problems

Some of the most common website functionality issues include:

• Persistent errors – A huge turn-off for users is landing on a site where links don’t work, videos can’t play and images are missing. Frequent errors are not acceptable, especially when you are trying to come across professionally. Your website is a reflection of your company. It’s vitally important therefore, to ensure that all your links, videos, and images are running smoothly at all times. Sometimes, these issues are related to factors like your web hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to make sure that remain proactive and that you attend to all problems immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your site offers visitors certain functionality, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you intend to sell products on your site, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add products to a cart, apply discount codes, complete their purchases with a credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

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

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

Common issues that can cause a bad user experience include the following:

• Ease Of Use – Your site must be easy to use and intuitive to navigate. Your service information should not be hard to find. Your customers want user-friendly features and they want to find what they are looking for as quickly and as effortlessly as possible. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable content to your site (e.g. PDF files), 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 customers. Providing features like search engine-friendly links, product and service categories and sections where related content is grouped or linked together can provide visitors with an enjoyable user experience.
• Stimulating Site – Users stay longer on websites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that provide them with stimulating options. To accomplish this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your website users. For example, highlight hyperlinks which lead to product pages by inserting beautiful images next to well-written descriptions. This can be very effective and will help you improve not only the user experience on your site, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• User Interactivity – Another area that helps to improve user experience on your website is providing interactive features that engage your customers, such as the ability to comment on, 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 … Additionally, you want users to browse quickly within your website and access your information without waiting around for pages to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Trustworthy Site – One of the most important and often ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that users feel comfortable doing business with you online. To reassure your potential clients that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your site includes legal compliance pages such as a contact page, privacy statement, terms and conditions of use, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(Site design problems)

As the above shows, there are many areas that can lead to a poor user experience and impact your business success online. If your web site isn’t designed in a user-friendly way, you run the serious risk of not only losing prospective paying customers but also your existing clients too.

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

First, keep in mind that getting a website overhaul can take some time and can be somewhat costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you currently operate, especially if the work requires modifying web code extensively.

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

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We plan to provide a lot more information about WordPress on this site, but here are just a few things to keep in mind about why you should use WordPress:

WP Themes – Unique Web Design Features

WP themes are unique website design template systems that let you quickly modify the look and feel of your entire site without touching the website’s content and modifying the underlying software functionality.

There are thousands of great-looking themes built for WordPress available that you can download and install on your site. Many of these are either free of charge, or they are relatively cheap, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes are fully responsive and provide users with flexible and customizable options for changing your site’s design settings such as the color, elements like headers and footers, page layouts and more. This is just part of what makes WordPress an ideal tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that works for your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• Understanding WP Themes

WordPress – Modular Scalability

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

WordPress plugins, like WordPress themes, integrate easily with your site to provide you with virtually unlimited new features or functionality.

Earlier in this post we looked at problems in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly constructed website can cost you business.

Plugins can help you overcome these problems quite inexpensively. If there is a feature that needs to be in your site, just install a WordPress plugin that will do what you want to get things done.

Want a plugin that will let you know about any issues with your website such as links not working, videos not playing, pictures that are missing or even tell you if your entire website has gone down? No problems … there are WordPress plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about problems 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 solution? Again, no problem! There are several WordPress plugins that will help you sell goods or services online and provide your customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to select and add products to a shopping cart, enter coupons, buy using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally thousands of fantastic WP plugins that you can download and easily install on your website and are freely available, or are extremely well priced, once again, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WP Plugins)

You can learn more about WP plugins here:

• WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Expand Your Site’s Capability

WordPress – An Immediate Web User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and exciting themes that cover all needs and applications and plugins that allow web users to connect, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-powered site, WP themes, plugins and great content, you can create a very rich user experience that will keep them coming back for more.

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

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress please click on links to visit our related posts section.

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