Are you losing prospects because of a poorly-built web site? A poorly-designed web site could cost you valuable business.

In a world where beautiful design sells, the way your web site looks is becoming ever more important to your business success. Your website is probably the first thing that your potential clients see and this could affect their decision to purchase from you.

Think about how most people do research about products nowadays. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we will jump online and go visit somebody’s website before taking the next step.

Now, try to see things from your prospect’s point of view. How does your website appear to others? Does it invite people to approach and explore things further, or does it make people confused and unsure about what to do next?

What your prospects see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see on your screen) is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can influence your web visitors’ experience and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Help You Fix A Poorly-Designed Web Site?

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

Website Design Issues

Typical web design problems that can affect a user’s perception of your website include:

• Color – Poor color schemes affect your results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are ways to pick web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to help make sure that the palettes you choose will display correctly across different devices. If in doubt, consult a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain unattractive, outdated or just plain old ugly graphics can easily result in users quickly losing interest in away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic element choices and excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – How your page content is structured can impact how users navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other useful assistive features such as search boxes are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, page columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – As websites are now viewed through a range of devices with different-sized screens, it’s vitally important that your web design be responsive. If your website does not resize automatically to display your information on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you could lose valuable customers.

Site Functionality Problems

Common website functionality issues may include:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is arriving on a page where some hyperlinks don’t work, videos don’t play and graphics aren’t showing. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable, especially if your goal is to come across professionally. Your website is a reflection of your company. It’s important to ensure that all your links, videos, and images are running smoothly at all times. In some cases, problems could be related to things 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 as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your business provides users certain features, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you intend to sell products on your site, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily select and add products to a shopping cart, enter coupons, buy with a credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Normally, the area that is most affected because of a poorly-designed website is the “user experience”.

Anything less than a great user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead to sharing their disappointment in social media, forums, review sites, comments, etc., bringing you negative publicity.

Some common problems that can create a poor user experience include:

• User-Friendly – Your site must be easy to use and effortless to navigate around in. Information about your products and services should not be kept in obscure places. Your prospective clients want user-friendly features and they want to find things quickly and with minimal hassle. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable files to your site (e.g. spreadsheets), 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 prospective clients but also current customers. Having features such as descriptive URLs, product and service categories and sections where related content is grouped or linked together provides visitors with an enjoyable experience.
• Stimulating Features – Customers stick around on websites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that provide them with stimulating options. To achieve this you need to find a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your visitors. For example, highlight links pointing to product pages with eye-catching photos or illustrations beside well-written descriptions. This can be very effective and will help you improve not just the user experience on your website, but can also help you get more sales and conversions.
• User Interactivity – Another aspect that helps to improve user experience on your website is providing interactive features that engage customers, like the ability to comment on, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your staff via a responsive helpdesk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … Additionally, you want visitors to browse quickly through your site and access your information without waiting around for content to load, so having your site optimized for faster loading pages is important.
• Trustworthy Site – One of the most important and often neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that users feel confident interacting with you online. To reassure your visitors that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your site includes legal pages such as a business contact page, privacy statement, terms of use, security information, FTC disclaimers, etc.

(Web site 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 designed, you run the serious risk of not only losing potential paying customers but also some of existing customers too.

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

First, be aware that getting a website overhaul 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 modifying code.

If you are researching the process of having a new website built or upgrading an existing site, then we recommend that you consider using the WordPress web content publishing platform.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We currently share a lot more articles about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress on this site, but here are just a few of the things to keep in mind about why you should seriously consider using WordPress:

WordPress Themes – Unique Website Design Features

WP themes are unique web design template systems that allow you to quickly modify the look and feel of your entire site in minutes.

There are literally thousands of professional themes designed for WordPress site owners available that you can download and install on your site. Many of these are either free of charge, or can be purchased relatively inexpensively, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WP Themes)

Most WordPress themes nowadays are responsive and provide you with flexible and customizable features for changing your site’s design settings like the color, elements like headers and footers, layouts and more. Themes are just part of what makes WordPress such a powerful tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that helps your business.

You can learn about WordPress themes here:

• WP For Beginners – An Overview Of Themes

WP Plugins – Powerful Expansion

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

WP plugins, like WP themes, integrate easily with your site to provide you with almost unlimited extra features.

Earlier in this article we talked about issues like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built web site could end up losing you prospective customers.

WP plugins can help you overcome these problems quite inexpensively. If there is a functionality you would like to add to your site, just install a WP plugin that does what you need to get things done.

Want a plugin that will let you know about any problems on your site like links not working, audios not playing, graphics that are missing or even alert you if your entire site has gone down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about issues so you can take immediate corrective action!

Need 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 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 choose and add products to a cart, use discount codes, purchase with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and email confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are tens of thousands of useful WP plugins that you can install on your website and are freely available, or that are extremely well priced, once again, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WordPress Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• WordPress Plugins – Enhancing Your Site’s Features

WordPress – An Immediate Website User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and visually-exciting themes that cover all kinds of applications and 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 people returning again and again.

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

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.

***

***