Are you losing customers because of poor web design? A poorly-designed web site can lose you valuable business.

In a world where aesthetic principles matter, the way your website looks is very important to the success of your business. Your website is probably the first thing that a visitor sees and this could affect their purchasing decision.

We typically mostly do it online. Even if it’s just for doing preliminary research, we will jump online and go browse a site first before purchasing goods in-store or online.

Now, try to see things from your visitor’s perspective. How does your web site appear to other people? Does your site invite them to come and explore things further, or does it make them hesitant and cautious about what to do next?

What customers 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’ thoughts and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Fix A Poorly-Designed Website?

Let’s review a few key design problems that can affect your site’s results and performance:

Web Site Design Issues

Common web design problems that can influence a potential customer’s perception about your site include:

• Color – Bad color combinations affect your results. This also applies to using text and background color. There are methods that can help you choose web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to help ensure that the color combinations you select will display predictably across different devices. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain unpleasant, outdated and just plain hard to read typefaces can easily turn prospects off your website. Visitors can also be affected by subtle inconsistencies in your design elements and excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – How your content is structured can impact the way visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other useful objects.
• Responsiveness – Since websites are now viewed through various devices with different-sized browsers, it’s vitally important that your web design be responsive. If your website does not display well across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you could lose customers.

Functionality Problems

Typical website functionality problems include:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for users is landing on a site where some links don’t work, videos don’t play and images are missing. Frequent errors are no longer acceptable, especially when you are trying to come across as a professional. Your website reflects your business. It’s important to make sure that all your links, videos, and graphics remain working all the time. Sometimes, these issues are caused by factors such as your hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to ensure that you’re consistently proactive and that you attend to problems immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your web site provides visitors certain functionality, then make sure that these functionalities are not limited. For example, if you plan to sell products online, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add products to a shopping cart, enter discount coupons, complete their transactions using credit cards or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Invariably, the area that suffers most due to a poorly-built site is in the realm of the “user experience”.

A disappointing user experience can leave a bad taste in visitors’ mouths and lead them to share their disappointment across social sites, user forums, review sites, commenting sections, etc ….

Here are some common problems that can lead to a poor user experience:

• Ease Of Use – Your website must be user-friendly. Information about your products and services 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 content to your site (e.g. forms and documents), 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 buyers but also current clients. Having features such as descriptive URLs, product and service categories and sections where your content can be easily found provides visitors with an enjoyable user experience.
• Stimulating Site – Customers want websites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that provide them with eye-catching options. This means striving for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your users. For example, draw attention to hyperlinks pointing to your product pages by inserting professionally-taken product pictures and well-crafted product descriptions. This is effective and will help improve not just the user experience on your website, but also grow your sales and conversions.
• User Interactivity – Another thing that helps customers decide to stick around on your site is to provide interactive features that engage your users, like allowing them to 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 users to browse quickly through your site 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 confident interacting with you online. To reassure your prospective buyers that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal compliance pages like a contact page, privacy statement, terms of usage, security information, earnings disclaimers, etc.

(Web site design issues)

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

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

First, understand that getting problems corrected on an existing site can take some time and can end up being quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you currently own, especially if the work requires a lot of web code writing.

If you are researching the process of getting a new website developed or upgrading an existing site, then we suggest that you consider using WordPress.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We currently provide more in-depth posts about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress on this site, but here are just a few key points to keep in mind about why you should seriously consider using WordPress:

WP Themes – Flexible Web Site Design

WP themes are unique web site design template systems that enable you to instantly change the look of your entire website with the click of a mouse button.

There are thousands of professional looking WordPress themes available that you can install on your website. Many of these are either free, or can be bought for a relatively reasonable price, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes nowadays are responsive and provide website owners with customizable options for changing your website’s design like the color, elements like headers and footers, page layouts and more. Themes are just one of the many things that make WordPress such a powerful tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that ultimately helps to improve your business.

You can learn about WP themes here:

• WordPress For Newbies – An Introduction To WP Themes

Plugins – Modular Functionality

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

WP plugins, like WP themes, integrate with your website to provide you with virtually unlimited additional features.

Earlier we talked about areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built web site can end up costing you business.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a functionality that you would like integrated into your site, just install a plugin that will get the job done.

Need a plugin that will let you know about any issues on your website like links not working, videos not playing, images that aren’t displaying or even alert you if your whole 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!

Want a plugin that will turn your site into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce system? Again, no problem! There are several inexpensive WordPress plugins that will help you sell goods or services on your site and provide your customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily choose and add products to a shopping cart, enter discounts, complete purchases with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally tens of thousands of fantastic plugins designed for WordPress site owners that you can install on your site at no cost, or can be bought quite cheaply, once again, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WP Plugins)

Learn more about WordPress plugins here:

• WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Enhance Your Web Site’s Capabilities

WordPress – An Enhanced Website User Experience

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

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

As stated earlier, consumers nowadays do extensive research online before they make a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed with a focus on the customer, your prospective customers will not return and simply move on to another business that does provide them with a better website.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site 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 other posts we have published on this site.

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