Are you losing prospects because of a poorly-designed web site? Regardless of how great the quality of your products and services may be, a poorly-constructed web site could end up losing you many new customers.

In a world where visually attractive things matter, how your website looks can play a significant part in the success of your business. 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 it’s only preliminary research, we still jump online and go visit somebody’s site first before purchasing goods in-store or online.

Now, put yourself in your customer’s position. How does your website appear to them? Does it invite them to come and explore things further, or does it make people confused and unsure about what to do next?

What customers see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see in your screen) is only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can affect your web visitors’ thoughts and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Help Fix Your Poorly-Built Web Site?

Here are just a few key design problems that can affect your web site:

Website Design Issues

Typical design issues that can affect a visitor’s perception about your site include:

• Color – Unattractive color combinations can impact on your website’s results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are tools that can help you specify web colors correctly and even safe web colors to help make sure that the color combinations you choose will display predictably across various web formats. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain aesthetically unattractive, outdated and just plain old ugly graphics can easily turn prospects off your website. Visitors can also be affected by design inconsistencies and excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you structure your page content can have a significant effect on the way visitors navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigational items, links, and other objects.
• Responsiveness – Since information is now accessed using a range of devices with different-sized screens, it’s important that your web design be fully responsive. If your website does not resize automatically to fit your content on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you may experience business opportunity losses.

Functionality Problems

Common website functionality issues include:

• Too many errors – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a site where some links don’t work, videos don’t play and images are missing. Subpar functionality is not acceptable for any website, especially when you are trying to come across as a professional and dependable business. Your website is a reflection of your business. It’s important therefore, to ensure that all your links, videos, and graphics are up and running at all times. In some cases, problems may be caused by 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 corrected immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your business offers visitors specific 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 users with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add items to a shopping cart, apply discounts, buy using credit cards or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

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

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

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

• Ease Of Use – Your website must be easy to use and effortless to navigate around in. Information about your products and services should not be hard to find. Your 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 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 website isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential clients but current clients too. Features like search engine-friendly links, product and service categories and sections where topic-related content is grouped or linked together can provide users with an enjoyable experience.
• Compelling Web Site – Users stick around on websites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that are eye-catching and stimulating. To achieve this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your website users. For example, draw attention to hyperlinks that direct visitors to product pages with beautiful photos or illustrations alongside well-crafted product descriptions. This is effective and can help you improve not just the user experience on your website, but can also help you generate more sales and conversions.
• User Engagement Features – Another area that helps users want to stick around on your website is to provide interactive features that engage users, like features that let them\visitors 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 around your site and access your data without waiting around for pages to load, so site loading optimization is important.
• Compliant Website – One of the most important and often ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to make users feel comfortable doing business with you online. To reassure your visitors that you are 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 usage, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(Website design problems)

As the above shows, there are many areas that can lead to a poor user experience and negatively impact your business results online. If your website is poorly constructed, you run the risk of not only losing potential paying clients but also some of current clients too.

Now … what if you have arrived here because you have an existing website with design problems that you feel could be affecting your business?

First, understand that getting problems addressed on an existing site can take time and can also be quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you operate, especially if the work requires a lot of web code editing.

If you are researching the process of having a new website developed or upgrading an existing web site, then we recommend that you consider building or redesigning your website with WordPress.

(WordPress can help you improve your website results!)

We plan to share more posts about WordPress on this site, but here are just a few things to keep in mind about why you should seriously choose WordPress:

WP Themes – Instant Web Design

WP themes are unique web design template systems that enable you to completely customize the look and feel of your entire site without touching the site’s content or changing any of the underlying software functionality.

There are literally thousands of professional looking WordPress themes available that can be downloaded. Many of these are either freely available, or are extremely well priced, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WP Themes)

Most WordPress themes nowadays are fully responsive and provide users with flexible and customizable options for changing your website’s design settings like the color, template elements like menus and headers, page layouts and more. This is just one of the many things that make WordPress such a great tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that ultimately helps to improve your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• WordPress For Beginners – An Overview Of WordPress Themes

WordPress – Virtually Unlimited Functionality

Another compelling reason to build your site using WordPress is that WordPress gives users expandable functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

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

Earlier we discussed issues like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built website can lose you business.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a feature you would like to add to your website, just install a plugin that does exactly what you want to get things done.

Need a plugin that will notify you about any issues on your website like links not working, audios not playing, images that aren’t displaying or even alert you if your entire 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!

Need a plugin that will turn your site into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce system? Again, no problem! There are several plugins that will help you sell products online and provide your customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily choose and add products to a shopping cart, use coupons, complete their orders using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally tens of thousands of useful plugins designed for WordPress that can be downloaded for free, or that are extremely affordable and will save you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WordPress Plugins)

You can learn more about plugins here:

• Using WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Enhance Your Web Site’s Capabilities

WordPress – An Enhanced User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful, professional and visually-exciting themes that cover all types of uses and plugins that allow visitors to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress site, WordPress themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a very a highly interactive and engaging user experience that will keep people returning for more.

As stated earlier, consumers nowadays do research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed with a focus on the customer, your potential customers will not return and simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about using WordPress please see our related posts section.

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