Are you missing out on customers because of a poorly-built web site? A poorly-built website could cost you many new customers.

In a world where beautiful design matters, the design of your website is becoming more important to the success of your business. Your website is the first thing that your 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 turn to our mobile device and go visit a site before making our next move.

Now, put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. How does your website appear to others? Does your site invite them to come and explore things further, or does it make them confused 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 visitors’ thoughts and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Fix Poor Web Design?

Let’s review some key design problems that can affect your web site’s results:

Web Site Design Problems

Some common web design issues that can affect a prospect’s perception about your website include the following:

• Color – Poor color combinations can impact on your results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are methods that can help you specify web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to make sure that the palettes you want to use will display correctly across different devices. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain uninteresting, outdated and just plain old hard to read text can result in visitors quickly losing interest in off your site. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic element choices or overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you structure your pages can impact the way visitors navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigation menus, links, and other useful objects.
• Responsiveness – As business information is now accessed through various devices with different-sized screens, it’s vitally important that your website’s design be responsive. If your website does not display well across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will lose business opportunities.

Functionality Problems

Some common functionality issues can include:

• Frequent website errors – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a page where some links don’t work, videos can’t play and images are missing. Persistent errors are no longer acceptable, especially when your aim is to come across professionally. Your digital presence reflects your business. It’s vitally important therefore, to ensure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and images are running smoothly all the time. Sometimes, problems are caused by external things like your web hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to ensure that remain proactive and that you get problems repaired as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your website offers users specific functionalities, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you plan to sell products online, make sure that you provide users with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily select and add products to a shopping cart, use coupons, pay with credit cards or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

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

A disappointing user experience can leave a bad taste in users mouths and lead to venting their disappointment across social networks, user forums, review sites, commenting sections, etc ….

Some common problems that can lead to a bad user experience include:

• User-Friendly – Your website must be user-friendly. Information about your products and services should be easy to find. Your customers want user-friendly features and they want to find things quickly and without disappointment. 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.
• Organization – If your site content isn’t cleanly organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential customers but also current clients. Having features such as descriptive links, product and service categories and sections where your content can be easily found can help provide users with an enjoyable user experience.
• Compelling Web Site – Users want websites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that provide them with eye-catching options. This means aiming for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your users. For example, highlight links which lead to your product pages with beautiful graphics alongside well-crafted descriptions. This can be very effective and can help improve not only the user experience on your website, but also grow your sales and conversions.
• Engaging Features – Another aspect that helps users decide to stay longer on your site is providing interactive features that engage users, such as features that let users leave comments, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your support staff via a responsive helpdesk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … Additionally, you want visitors to navigate quickly around your website and access your data without waiting around for content to load, so having your site optimized for faster loading pages is important.
• Compliance – One of the most important and often neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make users feel confident interacting with you online. To reassure your prospective buyers that your business is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal compliance pages such as a contact page, privacy statement, terms of use, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(Web design problems)

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

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

First, keep in mind that getting a complete website overhaul can take some time and can also be fairly costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you currently operate, especially if what needs doing requires extensive web development.

If you are in the process of getting a new website built or upgrading an existing site, then we suggest that you consider choosing WordPress.

(WordPress can help you improve your website results!)

We currently share more in-depth information about the benefits and advantages of the WordPress platform on this site, but here are just a few of the things to keep in mind about why you should seriously consider using WordPress:

Themes – Unique Website Design Features

WordPress themes are unique website design templates that let you immediately change the look and feel of your website without touching the site’s content or modifying any underlying software.

There are literally thousands of professionally designed WP themes available that you can install on your website. Many themes are either free, or they are extremely affordable, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes created for WordPress are responsive and provide you with highly customizable options for changing your site’s design settings like the color, template elements like headers, footers, menus and styles, layouts and more. This is just part of what makes WordPress an ideal tool for helping you create a design for your website that ultimately works for your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• Themes – An Introduction

WP Plugins – Modular Features

Another compelling reason to choose the WP CMS is that WordPress provides site owners with modular functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

Plugins, like themes, integrate with your site to provide you with virtually unlimited additional features.

Earlier we talked about issues like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly constructed web site can cost you prospective buyers.

WordPress plugins can help you overcome these problems quite easily. If there is a feature you want to add to your site, just install a plugin that does what you need to get things done.

Need a plugin that will let you know about any issues detected on your site like hyperlinks not working, videos not playing, images that are missing or even alert you if your whole website has gone down? No problems … there are WP plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about issues so you can take immediate corrective action!

Need a plugin that will let you turn your site 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 goods or services online and provide your visitors with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily choose and add products to a cart, use coupons, buy using credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are tens of thousands of great WordPress plugins that can be easily downloaded at no cost, or that you can purchase for a small price, once again, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WP Plugins)

Learn more about WordPress plugins here:

• Using WordPress Plugins To Enhance Your Site’s Capability

WordPress – An Immediate Website User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful and exciting themes that cover all types of applications and plugins that allow customers to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-powered website, WordPress themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a very rich and immediate user experience that will keep your visitors coming back to your site.

As stated earlier, consumers do extensive research online before making purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed with customers 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 website and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website or blog please see other posts we have published on this site.

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