Are you missing out on prospects because of poor web design? A poorly-built web site can end up costing you valuable business.

In a world where attractive design sells, your website’s design can affect the success of your business. Your website may be the first thing that your visitors see and this can affect their purchasing decision.

Think about how you research products and services nowadays. Even if it’s only doing preliminary research, we still turn to our smart phone and go visit somebody’s website before taking the next step.

Now, put yourself in your prospect’s position. How does your web site appear to other people? Does it invite people to draw closer and explore things further, or does it make people hesitant and unsure about where to go next?

What potential clients see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see on your screen) is only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can affect your web visitors’ perceptions and their decision to ultimately purchase from you.

Can WordPress Fix A Poorly-Built Web Site?

Let’s take a look at some of the more important design problems that can affect your site:

Website Design Problems

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

• Color – Clashing color schemes affect your results. This also applies to using text and background color. There are methods to specify web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to ensure that the color combinations you want to use will display predictably across various web formats. If in doubt, consult a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain boring, outdated and just plain ugly graphic elements can result in users quickly losing interest in away from your site. Visitors can also be affected by overall design inconsistencies or excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – The way your page content is arranged can have an impact effect on how users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigation menus, links, and other objects.
• Responsiveness – As websites are now accessed through various devices with different-sized screens, it’s vitally important that your web design be responsive. If your website does not display well across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you may lose business opportunities.

Functionality Problems

Typical website functionality problems include the following:

• Too many errors – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a page where hyperlinks don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics are missing. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable, especially when your aim is to come across as a professional and dependable company. Your website reflects your company. It’s important to ensure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and images remain up and running at all times. In some cases, these issues are related to external factors such as your hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to ensure that remain proactive and that you get problems fixed as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your site offers visitors specific functionality, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you intend to sell goods or services online, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to choose and add items to a shopping cart, enter coupons, complete purchases using credit cards or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

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

A bad user experience can leave a bad taste in visitors’ mouths and lead them to share their dissatisfaction across social media, user forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

Some common issues that can lead to a disappointing user experience can include the following:

• User-Friendly – Your site needs to be easy to use and intuitive to navigate. Your product 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 information to your site (e.g. forms and documents), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organization – If your web site isn’t well organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective customers but also existing clients. Things like descriptive URLs, product and service categories and sections where your content can be easily found provides visitors with a good experience.
• Compelling Features – Users stay longer on websites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that provide them with eye-catching options. This requires aiming for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your visitors. For example, draw attention to hyperlinks which point to your product pages with beautiful product images beside well-written product descriptions. This can be very effective and will help improve not just the user experience on your site, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• User Engagement Features – Another aspect that helps to improve user experience on your site is to provide interactive features that engage your users, such as allowing them 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 … Additionally, you want users to move quickly through your website and access your data without waiting around for content to load, so having your site optimized for faster loading pages is important.
• Reassurance – One of the most important and often most ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to ensure that users feel comfortable interacting with you online. To reassure your web visitors that you are 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, FTC disclaimers, etc.

(Web site 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 site isn’t designed in a user-friendly way, you run the risk of not only losing prospective paying customers but also current customers as well.

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

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

If you are researching the process of getting a new website built or overhauling an existing site, then we suggest that you consider building or redesigning your website with WordPress.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

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

WordPress Themes – Unique Web Design Features

WP themes are unique website design templates that let you easily modify the look and feel of your website without affecting the website’s content and modifying the core software.

There are thousands of professional themes built for WordPress available that you can download and easily install on your website. Many of these are either free of charge, or can be bought for a relatively small price, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes designed for WordPress are fully responsive and provide users with highly customizable features for changing the design on your website such as the color, template elements like headers, footers, menus and styles, page layouts and more. This is just part of what makes WordPress such a powerful tool for helping you create a design for your website that helps your business.

Learn about WordPress themes here:

• WordPress For Business – An Overview Of WordPress Themes

WP Plugins – Virtually Unlimited Expansion

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

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

Earlier in this article we looked at areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built website could end up losing you prospective clients.

WordPress plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite inexpensively. If there is a feature that you want to add to your site, just install a WP plugin that does exactly what you want your site to do.

Need a plugin that will notify you immediately about any issues with your website such as links not working, videos not streaming, graphics that are missing or even alert you if your whole website is down? No problems … there are WP plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about problems so you can correct these immediately!

Want a plugin that will transform your website into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce system? Again, no problem! There are several inexpensive and easy-to-use plugins that will help you sell products on your site and provide your customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add items to a shopping cart, apply discounts, purchase using credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like WP themes, there are tens of thousands of great plugins that you can download and easily install on your website for free, or are relatively cheap, once again, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WordPress Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• Adding New Functionality To Your Website With WP Plugins

WordPress – A Rich User Experience

In addition to being able to address problems caused by a poorly-built 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 types of uses and applications and plugins that allow website users to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-driven site, WP themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a very rich and interactive user experience that will keep them coming back to your website.

As stated earlier, consumers do extensive research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed with customers in mind, consumers will simply move on to another business that does provide them with a better website or better user experience.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you expand your business business online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WordPress software please see our related posts section.

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