Are you losing business because of poor web design? No matter how strong your services are, a poorly-constructed website could lose you many new customers.

In a world where aesthetic principles matter, the design of your web site can play a significant part in your business success. Your website is probably the first thing that a visitor sees and this can affect their decision to use your services.

We typically do it online. Even if it’s only for preliminary research, we will fire up our laptop and go visit someone’s web site before making our next move.

Now, put yourself in your visitor’s position. How does your web presence appear to them? Does your site invite people to enter and explore things further, or does it make them hesitant and cautious about what to do next?

The way your site looks is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can affect your web visitors’ thoughts and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Help You Fix Poor Web Design?

Let’s review some of the key design issues that can affect your website:

Web Site Design Problems

Some of the most common design issues that can influence your prospect’s perception of your website include some following:

• Color – Poor color combinations can affect your results. This also applies to your choice of text and background color. There are ways to pick web colors correctly and even safe web colors you can use to make sure that the colors you use will display predictably across various web formats. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain boring, outdated and just plain hard to read typefaces can easily turn prospects away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by subtle inconsistencies in your design elements and overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you structure your pages can affect the way visitors navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigation items, links, and other useful elements are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, content columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – As websites are now accessed using a range of devices with different-sized screens and browsers, it’s important that your web design be fully responsive. If your website does not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will lose opportunities.

Functionality Problems

Some of the most common website functionality issues can include:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for users is landing on a page where some links don’t work, videos don’t play and graphics are missing. Persistent site errors are not acceptable on any website, especially if you are trying to come across professionally. Your website is a reflection of your company. It’s important therefore, to ensure that all your links, videos, and images are working all the time. Sometimes, these issues may be caused by factors like your web hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to ensure that remain proactive and that all problems are corrected immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your business provides visitors specific features or functionalities, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you would like to sell products on your site, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to choose and add items to a cart, use discount codes, purchase using credit cards or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Typically, where your business suffers most noticeably due to a poorly-designed site is the “user experience”.

A disappointing user experience can leave a bad taste in visitors’ mouths and lead them to vent their dissatisfaction across social media, forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

Here are some of the more common problems that can create a poor user experience:

• Ease Of Use – Your website must be user-friendly. Your product information should be easy to locate. Your visitors want user-friendly features and they want to find what they are looking for quickly and without disappointment. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable files to your site (e.g. PDF price lists), make sure that users 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. Things such as descriptive URLs, product and service categories and sections where related content can be easily found will help provide visitors with an enjoyable user experience.
• Stimulating Website – Visitors stay longer on sites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that are stimulating. This means aiming for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling web copy that engages your users. For example, highlight hyperlinks pointing to your product pages by inserting professionally-taken product images next to well-crafted descriptions. This is effective and can help you improve not only the user experience on your site, but also grow your sales and conversions.
• Interactive Features – Another thing that helps users want to stick around on your site is providing interactive features that engage your customers, such as features that let them\visitors leave comments, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your staff via a responsive helpdesk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … You also want visitors to move quickly around your website and access your information without waiting around for content to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Reassurance – One of the most important and often ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to make users feel comfortable interacting with you online. To reassure your visitors that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your website includes legal compliance pages like a business contact page, privacy statement, terms of use, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(Web design issues)

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 site isn’t designed in a user-friendly way, you run the risk of not only losing prospective paying customers but also your current clients too.

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

First, understand that getting a complete website overhaul can take some time and can also end up being quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you own, especially if the work requires rewriting code.

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

(WordPress can improve your website results!)

We plan to publish a lot more articles about the benefits and advantages of WordPress on this site, but here are just a few things to keep in mind about why you should use WordPress:

WordPress – Customizable Web Design

WP themes are unique web site design templates that enable you to quickly modify the look of your site in minutes.

There are literally thousands of professionally designed WP themes available that can be easily downloaded. Many themes are either free of charge, or they can be bought relatively cheaply, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WP Themes)

Most WordPress themes nowadays are responsive and provide users with flexible and customizable options for changing the design of your site such as color, template elements like menus, headers, footers and styles, page layouts and more. This is just part of what makes WordPress an ideal tool for helping you create a design for your website that works for your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• WP For Beginners – An Introduction To Themes

WordPress Plugins – Modular Scalability

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

Plugins, like WordPress themes, integrate with your site to provide you with almost unlimited scalability.

Earlier in this article we discussed problems in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built web site can cost you money.

WordPress plugins can help you overcome these issues quite easily. If there is a feature that needs to be integrated with your website, just install a plugin that gets the job done.

Want a plugin that will let you know about any issues on your website like links not working, audios not playing, pictures that aren’t displaying or even alert you if your entire site is down? No problems … there are WordPress plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about issues so you can correct these immediately!

Want a plugin that will turn your site 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 goods or services online and provide your visitors with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to select and add products to a cart, apply discounts, buy with credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally thousands of fantastic plugins built for WordPress that can be easily downloaded for free, or that are relatively cheap, once again, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WP Plugins)

Learn more about WP plugins here:

• Using WordPress Plugins – The Easy Way To Enhance Your Web Site’s Capability

WordPress – An Engaging User Experience

In addition to being able to address issues caused by a poorly-built website, WordPress can also help you provide website users with a great user experience.

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and visually-exciting themes that cover all kinds of uses and feature-rich plugins that allow visitors to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress website, WordPress themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a rich and engaging user experience that will keep users coming back again and again.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers nowadays will do research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rich and engaging user experience, consumers will simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WordPress web site management software please see our related posts section.

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