Are you losing prospects because of poor web design? A poorly-constructed website could end up losing you many new customers.

In a world where beautiful design matters, the look of your website can affect your business success. Your website is the first thing that a potential buyers see and this could affect their decision to buy your products and use your services.

Think about how you research products nowadays. Even if it’s only just preliminary research, we will jump online and go visit a web site first before buying something in-store or online.

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

The way your site looks is only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can influence your visitors’ perceptions and their decision to do business with you.

Can WordPress Fix Bad Web Design?

Here are just a few key design problems that can affect your web site’s results and performance:

Web Site Design Issues

Some common design issues that can influence a user’s perception about your site include some following:

• Color – Clashing color schemes can affect your website’s results. This also applies to your choice of text and background color. There are ways to specify web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to ensure that the colors you use will display correctly across various mediums. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain unexciting, outdated or just plain hard to read text can easily result in visitors quickly losing interest in off your site. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic elements or overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you structure your pages can significantly impact the way visitors navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigation items, links, and other useful elements are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, content columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – Since information is now viewed by a range of devices with different-sized screens, it’s vitally important that your website’s design be fully responsive. If your web pages do not resize automatically to display your information across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you may lose opportunities.

Web Site Functionality Issues

Some of the most common functionality problems include the following:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a page where links don’t work, videos don’t play and images are missing. Subpar functionality is not acceptable for a website, especially if you are trying to come across as a professional. Your website reflects your business. It’s important therefore, to ensure that all your links, videos, and images are working at all times. Sometimes, problems are caused by external factors such as your hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to make sure that you’re always proactive and that you attend to all problems as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your site offers users certain features and functionalities, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you would like to sell goods or services online, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add products to a shopping cart, use coupons, complete purchases using a credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Normally, where customers suffer the most because of a poorly-constructed site is in the realm of the “user experience”.

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

Here are some common problems that can lead to a poor user experience:

• User-Friendly – Your site should be user-friendly. Your service information should not be hard to find. Your potential buyers want user-friendly features and they want to find things as quickly and as effortlessly as possible. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable content to your site (e.g. videos), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organized – If your site content isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential clients but current clients also. Providing features like search engine-friendly URLs, product and service categories and sections where your content is grouped or linked together provides visitors with an enjoyable user experience.
• Stimulating Site – Users stick around on sites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that are eye-catching and stimulating. This requires finding a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your users. For example, draw attention to links which point to product pages by inserting great product images with well-crafted descriptions. This is effective and will help improve not just the user experience on your website, but also grow your sales and conversions.
• Interactive Features – Another aspect that helps customers want to stay longer on your website is to provide interactive features that engage your customers, such as the ability to comment on, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your staff via a responsive help desk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … You also want users to move quickly around your website and access your data without waiting around for content to load, so site loading optimization is important.
• Reassuring Website – One of the most important and often ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that users feel confident interacting with you online. To reassure your prospective buyers that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your site includes legal compliance pages such as a business contact page, privacy statement, terms of usage, security information, affiliate disclaimers, etc.

(Web design issues)

As you can see, there are many areas that can contribute to a poor user experience and impact your business results online. If your web site isn’t designed in a user-friendly way, you run the risk of not only losing potential paying customers but also your current clients as well.

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

First, be aware that getting a website overhaul can take time and can end up being quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you have, especially if it requires extensive code modification.

If you are considering having a new website developed or upgrading an existing web site, then we suggest that you consider using WordPress.

(WordPress can improve your website results!)

We currently provide more in-depth posts about the benefits and advantages of the WordPress platform on this site, but here are just some key points to keep in mind about why you should seriously choose WordPress:

Themes – Unique Web Design Features

WP themes are unique web design template systems that let you immediately customize the look of your website in minutes.

There are literally thousands of professional looking WordPress themes available that you can download and install on your site. Many themes are either free of charge, or are relatively cheap to buy, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WP Themes)

Most WordPress themes are fully responsive and provide users with flexible and customizable options for changing design settings on your website such as the color, template elements like headers and footers, 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 works for your business.

You can learn about WP themes here:

• Themes – An Introduction

WordPress Plugins – Modular Functionality

Another great reason to build your site using WordPress is that WordPress gives site owners powerful functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

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

Earlier we discussed areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built web site can cost you prospective customers.

WordPress plugins can help you overcome these problems quite easily. If there is a feature that needs to be added to your site, just install a plugin that will do exactly what you need done.

Want a plugin that will notify you about any problems detected with your site like hyperlinks not working, audios not playing, pictures that aren’t showing or even alert you if your entire web site is down? No problems … there are WP plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about issues so you can take immediate corrective action!

Want a plugin that will transform your site 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 goods or services online and provide your visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add items to a cart, apply discounts, pay with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are thousands of great WP plugins that you can install on your website free of charge, or are relatively inexpensive and will save you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WP Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• Using WP Plugins To Improve Your Blog’s Features And Functionality

WordPress – A Rich Web User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful and exciting themes that cover all kinds of uses and feature-rich plugins that allow website visitors to connect, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-driven site, WordPress themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a rich and engaging user experience that will keep visitors returning to your site.

As stated earlier, consumers will do extensive research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rich and engaging user experience, they will simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website and better website experience.

Hopefully, this information has given you 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 web site please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.

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