Are you missing out on business because of a poorly-constructed website? A poorly-built website can end up costing you many new customers.

In a world where attractive design matters, the way your web site looks can play a significant part in your business success. Your website may be the first thing that your web visitor sees and this can influence their decision to purchase.

People are turning more than ever to the internet to find products and services. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we will jump online and go visit somebody’s website first before buying products in-store or online.

Now, try to see things from your prospect’s viewpoint. How does your website appear to visitors? Does your site invite them to approach and explore things further, or does it make people hesitant and unsure about what to do next?

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

Can WordPress Fix Bad Web Design?

Let’s take a look at some of the key design issues that can affect your site:

Website Design Issues

Some common design problems that can affect a visitor’s perception about your site include:

• Color – Bad color schemes can impact on your results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are tools that can help you pick web colors correctly and even safe web color palettes you can use to ensure that the colors you want to use will display predictably across different systems. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically boring, outdated and just plain hard to read typefaces can result in visitors quickly losing interest in away from your site. Visitors can also be affected by overall design inconsistencies and overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – The way your pages are laid out can affect how visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigation menus, links, and other useful elements are used, where menus are positioned on your site, content columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – As digital information is now accessed through a range of devices with different-sized browsers, it’s vitally important that the design of your website be fully responsive. If your web pages do not display well across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you could experience significant business opportunity losses.

Site Functionality Problems

Some of the most common website functionality problems include the following:

• Persistent site errors – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a website where links don’t work, videos don’t play and graphics aren’t displaying. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable for a website, especially when you are trying to come across as a professional. Your digital presence is a reflection of your company. It’s vitally important to ensure that all your links, videos, and graphics remain up and running at all times. In some cases, problems could be related to things like your hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to ensure that you’re consistently proactive and that you get issues corrected as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your web site offers users specific features and functionalities, then make sure that these features are not limited. For example, if you would like to sell products online, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily select and add items to a cart, use discounts, pay with credit cards or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

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

Anything less than a great user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead them to share their dissatisfaction in social media, user forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

Common issues that can create a bad user experience include:

• User-Friendly – Your site must be user-friendly. Information about your products and services should not be kept in obscure corners. Your site visitors 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 files to your site (e.g. presentation slides), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organized – If your site isn’t cleanly organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential customers but also current customers. Things like search engine-friendly URLs, product and service categories and clean areas where related content can be easily found provides visitors with a good user experience.
• Eye-Catching Web Site – Users stay longer on sites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that are eye-catching and stimulating. To accomplish this you need to find a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your website users. For example, draw attention to hyperlinks pointing to your product pages by inserting eye-popping images next to well-written descriptions. This can be very effective and will help you improve not only the user experience on your website, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• Engaging Website – Another aspect that helps to improve user experience on your site is providing interactive features that engage your visitors, such as 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 navigate quickly around your site and access your information without waiting around for pages to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Compliant Site – One of the most important and often neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make users feel comfortable doing business 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 such as a contact page, privacy policy, terms and conditions of use, security information, earnings disclaimers, etc.

(Web design problems)

As you can see, there are many areas that can contribute to a poor user experience and negatively impact your business success online. If your website is poorly built, you run the serious risk of not only losing prospective paying customers but also some of existing customers as well.

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

First, keep in mind that getting issues addressed on an existing site can take some time and can also end up being somewhat costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you operate, especially if the work requires a lot of code editing.

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

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

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

WordPress Themes – Instant Web Design

WP themes are unique website design templates that let you quickly modify the look of your site in minutes.

There are thousands of great-looking themes available that can be downloaded. Many themes are either free, or they are relatively inexpensive, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes nowadays are fully responsive and provide you with flexible and customizable features for changing your website’s design settings such as the color, elements like headers and footers, 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 helps to improve your business.

You can learn about WordPress themes here:

• WP Themes – An Overview

WordPress – Virtually Unlimited Features

Another great reason to build your site using the WP CMS is that WordPress gives website owners almost unlimited features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

WP plugins, like themes, integrate with your site to provide you with virtually unlimited new features.

Earlier we discussed issues like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly designed web site could cost you customers.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues quite easily. If there is a functionality that needs to be added to your website, just install a WordPress plugin that will help you get what you need done.

Want a plugin that will notify you about any problems with your website such as hyperlinks not working, audios not playing, pictures that are missing or even tell you if your entire web site is 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 let you turn your website into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce solution? Again, no problem! There are several inexpensive and easy-to-use plugins that will help you sell products online and provide your customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add products to a cart, use discount codes, complete purchases with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like WP themes, there are thousands of great plugins created for WordPress that can be downloaded for free, or are extremely well priced, once again, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WP Plugins)

You can learn more about plugins here:

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

WordPress – An Interactive Web User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful and visually-exciting themes that cover all types of applications and plugins that allow web visitors to contact, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-driven website, WP themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a rich and enhanced user experience that will keep people coming back for more.

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 rewarding user experience, they will simply move on to another business that does provide them with a better website.

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 please see our related posts section.

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