Are you losing customers because of poor web design? Regardless of how great the quality of your products and services may be, a poorly-constructed website could end up losing you valuable business.

In a world where visually attractive things matter, the way your website looks can contribute significantly to your business success. Your website may be the first thing that your web visitors see and this could influence their purchasing decision.

Think about how most people research products and services nowadays. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we will turn on our mobile device and go browse a web site before deciding what to do next.

Now, try to see things from your prospect’s perspective. How does your digital presence appear to other people? Does your site invite people to approach and explore things further, or does it make them confused and cautious 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 purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Help Fix A Poorly-Constructed Web Site?

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

Web Site Design Issues

Common web design issues that can affect your user’s perception about your site include:

• Color – Bad color combinations can impact on your site’s results. This also applies to using text and background color. There are ways to select web colors correctly and even safe web colors you can use to ensure that the color combinations you want to use will display predictably across different systems. If in doubt, consult a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically boring, outdated and just plain old ugly visual elements can easily turn prospects away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by overall design inconsistencies or overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you structure your page content can affect how users navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigation menus, links, and other objects.
• Responsiveness – As business information is now viewed through various devices with different-sized browsers, it’s important that the design of your website be responsive. If your web pages do not resize automatically to work across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you could lose business opportunities.

Site Functionality Problems

Typical functionality problems include the following:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is arriving on a site where some hyperlinks don’t work, videos don’t play and images are missing. Frequent errors are no longer acceptable on any website, especially if you are trying to come across professionally. Your digital presence reflects your company. It’s vitally important therefore, to make sure that all your links, videos, and graphics remain running smoothly at all times. Sometimes, problems are caused by factors such as your web hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to ensure that remain proactive and that you attend to all problems immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your website provides users certain functionality, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you want to sell products on your site, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add items to a cart, use discounts, complete purchases with credit cards or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts, and 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”.

Anything less than a great user experience can leave a bad taste in visitors’ mouths and lead them to vent their dissatisfaction on social networks, user forums, review sites, commenting sections, etc ….

Typical issues that can create a disappointing user experience include the following:

• Ease Of Use – Your website should be easy to use and intuitive to navigate around in. Information about your products and services should be easy to find. Your 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. PDF files), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organized – If your web site isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective customers but also existing clients. Things like descriptive URLs, product and service categories and sections where topic-related content is grouped or linked together can help provide visitors with an enjoyable experience.
• Stimulating Site – Customers want websites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that provide them with eye-catching options. This requires finding a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your users. For example, highlight hyperlinks that direct customers to your product pages with great images beside well-crafted descriptions. This is effective and can help improve not just the user experience on your site, but can also lead to more sales and conversions.
• Interactive Features – Another aspect that helps visitors want to stay longer on your website is providing interactive features that engage users, like features that let users 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 … Additionally, you want visitors to navigate quickly within your site and access your information without waiting around for pages to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Reassuring Site – One of the most important and often most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that users feel confident 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 compliance pages such as a contact page, privacy policy, terms of usage, security information, affiliate disclaimers, etc.

(Website design problems)

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

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

First, be aware that getting issues fixed on an existing site can take some time and can be quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you own, especially if what needs doing requires extensive web code editing.

If you are currently researching the process of having a new website built or redesigning an existing site, then we recommend that you consider building or redesigning your website with the WordPress content management platform.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We plan to publish more information about WordPress on this site, but here are just some things to keep in mind about why you should seriously choose WordPress:

WP Themes – Unique Website Design Features

WP themes are unique website design template systems that allow you to instantly modify the look and feel of your website without affecting the site’s content and modifying the underlying software.

There are thousands of professionally designed themes available that can be easily downloaded. Many of these are either freely available, or they are relatively cheap, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes for WordPress are responsive and provide users with flexible and customizable options for changing your site’s design such as the color, elements like menus and headers, 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 ultimately works for your business.

You can learn about WP themes here:

• WP For Business – An Introduction To WP Themes

Plugins – Modular Features

Another great reason to choose the WordPress CMS is that WordPress gives users scalable features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

WordPress plugins, like themes, integrate easily with your site to provide you with virtually unlimited functionality.

Earlier we talked about problems in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly constructed website can end up losing you business.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues quite inexpensively. If there is a feature that you want to integrate with your site, just install a plugin that will get the job done.

Want a plugin that will notify you immediately about any problems detected on your website like hyperlinks not working, audios not playing, images that aren’t displaying or even tell you if your whole website is down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about problems so you can correct these immediately!

Want a plugin that will transform your site into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce system? Again, no problem! There are several inexpensive plugins that will help you sell goods or services online and provide your users with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to select and add items to a shopping cart, apply coupons, complete their transactions with credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

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

(WordPress Plugins)

You can learn more about plugins here:

• Using WP Plugins Enhance Your Site’s Features And Functionality

WordPress – An Enhanced Website User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful and visually-exciting themes that cover all needs and uses and plugins that allow visitors to contact, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-powered site, WordPress themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a a highly interactive user experience that will keep visitors coming back again and again.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers nowadays 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 offer them a better website or better user experience.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you improve your business business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website please click on links to visit our related posts section.

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