Are you losing business because of poor web design? No matter how professional your company is, a poorly-built website could lose you many new customers.

In a world where attractive design matters, how your web site looks can be very important to your business success. Your website is probably the first thing that your web visitor sees and this can influence their decision to do business with you.

Think about how most people do research about businesses nowadays. Even if it’s just for preliminary research, we will jump online and go browse somebody’s website first before buying something in-store or online.

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

What your prospects see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see in your screen) is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can influence your web visitors’ perceptions and their decision to ultimately buy from you.

Can WordPress Help Fix Your Poorly-Designed Web Site?

Here are just a few key design issues that can affect your website:

Web Design Issues

Some of the most common design problems that can influence a user’s perception of your site include some or all of the following:

• Color – Unattractive color combinations affect your results. This also applies to text and background color. There are ways to select web colors correctly and even safe web colors to help ensure that the color schemes you decide on will display predictably across different mediums. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain aesthetically unexciting, outdated or just plain hard to read text can easily turn visitors away from your site. Visitors can also be affected by subtle inconsistencies in the design elements or excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – How you structure your pages can significantly impact how visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other elements are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, content columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – Since business information is now accessed using a range of devices with different-sized browsers, it’s important that the design of your website be fully responsive. If your website does not resize automatically to work on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you may lose business opportunities.

Site Functionality Problems

Some of the most common website functionality issues include:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for users is landing on a site where some hyperlinks don’t work, videos don’t play and graphics are missing. Persistent site errors are no longer acceptable, especially when your goal is to come across as a professional and reliable company. Your website reflects your organization. It’s important to make sure that all your links, videos, and graphics are working all the time. Sometimes, these problems may be caused by things like your hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to make sure that you’re always proactive and that all issues are fixed as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your web site provides users specific functionality, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you want to sell goods or services on your site, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to choose and add products to a cart, use discount codes, complete purchases using 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 web site is the “user experience”.

An unsatisfactory user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead to venting their dissatisfaction across social sites, forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

Here are some common issues that can create a poor user experience:

• User-Friendly – Your site should be easy to use and easy to navigate. Information about your products and services should be easy to find. Your potential buyers 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 information to your site (e.g. PDF files), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organized – If your web site isn’t cleanly organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential customers but current customers as well. Things such as descriptive URLs, product and service categories and well-organized areas where topic-related content can be easily found will help provide visitors with a good user experience.
• Stimulating Site – Customers want sites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that are eye-catching and stimulating. To accomplish this you need to strive for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your visitors. For example, draw attention to links that direct visitors to product pages by inserting eye-catching images with well-crafted product descriptions. This can be very effective and can help improve not just the user experience on your website, but can also lead to more sales and conversions.
• User Engagement Features – Another thing that helps to improve user experience on your site is to provide interactive features that engage visitors, 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 … You also want visitors to move quickly around your website and access your data without waiting around for content to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Compliance – One of the most important and often neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that users feel comfortable doing business with you online. To reassure your prospective customers that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your web site includes legal pages like a business contact page, privacy policy, terms and conditions of usage, security information, affiliate 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 web site is poorly designed, you run the serious risk of not only losing prospective customers but also some of existing customers as well.

Now … what if you have arrived found this site because you currently have an existing site with design problems that you feel could be affecting your business?

First, keep in mind that getting a website overhaul can take time and can be fairly costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you have, especially if it requires editing code extensively.

If you are currently considering getting a new website built or overhauling an existing site, then we suggest that you consider building or redesigning your website with the WordPress web content management platform.

(WordPress can help you improve your website results!)

We plan to provide a lot more in-depth information about WordPress on this site, but here are just some things to keep in mind about why you should consider WordPress:

WordPress – Unique Web Site Design Features

WP themes are unique website design templates that let you quickly change the look of your entire website with just a few mouse clicks.

There are thousands of professional looking themes created for WordPress users available that can be easily downloaded. Many of these are either free of charge, or they can be bought relatively inexpensively, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes are fully responsive and provide you with flexible and customizable features for changing your website’s design such as the color, template elements like headers and footers, layouts and more. Themes are just part of what makes WordPress an ideal tool for helping you create a design for your website that helps to improve your business.

You can learn about WordPress themes here:

• WP For Newbies – An Introduction To Themes

Plugins – Virtually Unlimited Functionality

Another compelling reason to build your site using WordPress is that WordPress provides you with almost unlimited functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

Plugins, like WP themes, integrate with your website to provide you with virtually unlimited expansion.

Earlier in this article we talked about issues in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly constructed website could end up costing you customers.

WP plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a feature that needs to be added to your site, just install a WordPress plugin that does what you need to get things done.

Want a plugin that will notify you about any problems with your site such as links not working, videos not streaming, pictures that aren’t displaying or even tell you if your whole site is down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about issues so you can take immediate corrective action!

Want a plugin that will transform 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 WordPress plugins that will help you sell goods or services online and provide your visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add products to a shopping cart, use discount coupons, complete purchases with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like WordPress themes, there are literally tens of thousands of great plugins designed for WordPress that can be easily downloaded at no cost, or can be purchased relatively cheaply and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WordPress Plugins)

You can learn more about plugins here:

• Adding New Functionality To Your WP Blog With Plugins

WordPress – A Rich Website User Experience

In addition to being able to address problems caused by a poorly-designed website, WordPress can also help you create a great user experience for your customers.

WordPress provides beautiful, professional and visually-exciting themes that cover all types of uses and applications and functional plugins that allow visitors to connect, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-powered site, WP themes, plugins and great content, you can create a very rich and engaging user experience that will keep people returning again and again.

As stated earlier, consumers will do research online before they make purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rewarding user experience, these potential buyers will simply move on to another business with 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 improve your business business online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please see other posts we have published on this site.

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