Are you losing prospects because of a poorly-designed site? No matter how professional your company is, a poorly-constructed website can end up losing you many new customers.

In a world where visually attractive things matter, your website’s design is becoming more important to the success of your business. Your website is the first thing that your visitor sees and this could affect their purchasing decision.

Think about how most people research services nowadays. Even if it’s just for preliminary research, we may switch on our mobile phone and go browse a site first before purchasing goods in-store or online.

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

How your site looks is only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can influence your web visitors’ perceptions and their decision to ultimately buy from you.

Can WordPress Fix A Poorly-Built Web Site?

Let’s review some of the more important design issues that can affect your website’s results:

Website Design Issues

Common web design issues that can influence your user’s perception of your site include:

• Color – Unattractive color schemes affect your results. This also applies to your choice of text and background color. There are methods to select web colors correctly and even safe web colors to help ensure that the colors you want to use will display correctly across different web formats. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically uninteresting, outdated and just plain old ugly images can turn prospects off your website. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic element choices or overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you structure your pages can have an impact effect on how visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigation menus, links, and other useful assistive elements like search boxes are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, content columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – As websites are now viewed using various devices with different-sized browsers, it’s important that your website’s design be responsive. If your web pages do not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you could lose business opportunities.

Site Functionality Issues

Some common website functionality problems include:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for users is arriving on a website where links don’t work, videos don’t play and images aren’t displaying. Subpar functionality is not acceptable, especially if your goal is to come across as a professional. Your website is a reflection of your organization. It’s vitally important to ensure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and images are up and running all the time. In some cases, these issues could be caused by factors like your hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to make sure that you’re consistently proactive and that you attend to problems as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your site offers users certain features, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you plan to sell products on your site, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to choose and add products to a shopping cart, apply discount codes, pay with credit cards or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

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

A bad user experience can leave a bad taste in visitors’ mouths and lead them to vent their disappointment on social media, user forums, review sites, comments, etc., bringing you negative publicity.

Here are some of the most common issues that can create a poor user experience:

• User-Friendly – Your website must be easy to use and easy to navigate. Your product information should be easy to locate. Your site visitors 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 information to your site (e.g. PDF price lists), make sure that users are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organization – If your web site isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential buyers but existing clients as well. Things like search engine-friendly URLs, product and service categories and sections where topic-related content can be easily found will help provide visitors with an enjoyable user experience.
• Eye-Catching Web Site – Customers stay longer on sites that are user friendly, well organized, and that provide them with eye-catching options. To accomplish this you need to find a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling web copy that engages your visitors. For example, draw attention to links that point to your product pages by inserting professionally-taken graphics with well-written descriptions. This is effective and will help you improve not just the user experience on your website, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• Engaging Features – Another aspect that helps to improve user experience on your site is providing interactive features that engage visitors, like features that let them\visitors 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 users to browse quickly within your website and access your information without waiting around for content to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Compliance – One of the most important and often most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to ensure that users feel comfortable interacting with you online. To reassure your web visitors that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal pages such as a business information page, privacy statement, terms and conditions of use, security information, FTC disclaimers, etc.

(Site 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 serious risk of not only losing potential clients but also current customers as well.

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

First, be aware that getting issues fixed on an existing website 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 extensive code modification.

If you are researching the process of getting a new website developed or overhauling an existing website, then we suggest that you consider using the WordPress content management platform.

(WordPress can improve your website results!)

We plan to share a lot more information about the benefits and advantages of WordPress on this site, but here are just some key points to keep in mind about why you should choose WordPress:

Themes – Unique Website Design Features

WordPress themes are unique website design templates that enable you to immediately modify the look and feel of your entire site without affecting the website’s content or changing any of the underlying site functionality.

There are thousands of great-looking WordPress themes available that you can install on your site. Many of these are either free, or they are extremely affordable, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes are responsive and provide you with customizable options for changing your site’s design settings such as color, template elements like headers, footers, menus and styles, page layouts and more. Themes are just one of the many things that make WordPress an ideal tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that helps to improve your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• WP For Newbies – An Overview Of WP Themes

WordPress Plugins – Modular Scalability

Another compelling reason to choose WordPress is that WordPress gives you almost unlimited features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

WordPress plugins, like WP themes, integrate with your website to provide you with almost unlimited functionality.

Earlier we discussed problems in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly designed web site can end up losing you customers.

WP plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite easily. If there is a functionality that you would like integrated into your site, just install a WP plugin that will help you get the job done.

Want a plugin that will let you know about any issues detected with your site such as hyperlinks not working, audios not streaming, graphics that are missing or even tell you if your whole web site has gone down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about problems so you can take immediate corrective action!

Need a plugin that will turn 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 on your site and provide your customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily select and add items to a shopping cart, apply discount codes, order using credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are thousands of fantastic WP plugins that you can download and install on your site free of charge, or that are relatively cheap to buy and will save you thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WP Plugins)

You can learn more about WordPress plugins here:

• Adding New Features And Functionality To Your Web Site With Plugins

WordPress – An Immediate User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful and exciting themes that cover all needs and uses and functional plugins that allow customers to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-powered website, WP themes, plugins and great content, you can create a rich user experience that will keep visitors coming back for more.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers do extensive research online before they make purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed with customers in mind, these consumers will not return and simply move on to another business with a better website.

Hopefully, this article 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 website please click on links to visit our related posts section.

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