Are you missing out on customers because of poor web design? A poorly-built web site can lose you valuable business.

In a world where attractive design sells, how your web site looks is very important to your business success. Your website is the first thing that your web visitor sees and this can affect their decision to purchase.

We typically mostly do things online. Even if it’s just preliminary research, we may fire up our laptop and go visit someone’s web site first before purchasing goods in-store or online.

Now, try to see things from your customer’s viewpoint. How does your website appear to other people? Does it invite them to approach and explore things further, or does it make them hesitant and cautious about what to do next?

The way your site looks is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other things than can affect your visitors’ thoughts and their decision to ultimately buy from you.

Can WordPress Help Fix A Poorly-Built Web Site?

Let’s take a look at some of the more important design problems that can affect your website’s results and performance:

Web Site Design Problems

Some of the most common design issues that can affect a user’s perception of your website include some following:

• Color – Bad color combinations affect your results. This also applies to text and background color. There are ways to choose web colors correctly and even safe web colors to ensure that the palettes you select will display predictably across different systems. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain unattractive, outdated or just plain old hard to read text can result in users quickly losing interest in away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by overall design inconsistencies or excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you lay out your pages can significantly impact the way visitors navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other useful orientation features like search boxes are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, page columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – As websites are now accessed through a range of devices with different-sized screens, it’s vitally important that your web design be fully responsive. If your web pages do not display well across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will incur loss of customers.

Website Functionality Problems

Common functionality problems include the following:

• Frequent errors – A huge turn-off for users is landing on a site where hyperlinks don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics are missing. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable, especially if you are trying to come across as a professional. Your online presence reflects your organization. It’s vitally important to make sure that all your links, videos, and graphics remain up and running at all times. In some cases, problems are caused by factors like your web hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to ensure that remain proactive and that you attend to problems as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your business offers users certain features and functionalities, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you want to sell products online, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to select and add products to a shopping cart, enter discounts, buy using a credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Invariably, where your business suffers most noticeably due to a poorly-built website is the “user experience”.

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

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

• User-Friendly – Your site must be user-friendly. Your service information should not be kept in obscure places. Your customers 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 forms and documents), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organization – If your site content isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential clients but also existing clients. Things like descriptive links, product and service categories and clearly-defined sections where related content is grouped or linked together can provide users with an enjoyable user experience.
• Stimulating Features – Visitors stay longer on websites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that are stimulating. To accomplish this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your visitors. For example, highlight links which point to product pages with great graphics and well-written product descriptions. This can be very effective and can help you improve not only the user experience on your website, but can also help you get more sales and conversions.
• Interactive Features – Another area that helps visitors want to stay longer on your website is to provide interactive features that engage visitors, such as 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 … You also want visitors to browse quickly within your website and access your data without waiting around for content to load, so site loading optimization is important.
• Reassurance – One of the most important and often neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make users feel confident interacting with you online. To reassure your web visitors that your business is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your web site includes legal compliance pages like a contact page, privacy policy, terms of use, security information, affiliate disclaimers, etc.

(Site design issues)

As the above shows, there are many areas that can lead to a poor user experience and negatively impact your business success online. If your site is poorly built, you run the serious risk of not only losing potential customers but also your existing clients as well.

Now … what if you have arrived found this information because you have an existing website with design problems that you feel are affecting your business?

First, be aware that getting issues addressed on an existing site can take time and can end up being quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you currently operate, especially if what needs doing requires a lot of code writing.

If you are currently in the process of having a new website built or overhauling an existing site, then we suggest that you consider using the WordPress web site publishing platform.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We currently publish a lot more articles about WordPress on this site, but here are just a few of the things to keep in mind about why you should seriously choose WordPress:

Themes – Customizable Web Site Design

WP themes are unique website design templates that let you instantly change the look and feel of your entire site in minutes.

There are literally thousands of professional themes created for WordPress site owners available that can be downloaded. Many of these are either free, or they are relatively inexpensive, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most WordPress themes are responsive and provide users with highly customizable options for changing design settings of your website like the color, elements like menus, headers, footers, page 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.

Learn about WP themes here:

• A Newbie’s Guide To Understanding WordPress Themes

WordPress – Virtually Unlimited Scalability

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

WordPress plugins, like WP themes, integrate easily with your website to provide you with almost unlimited functionality.

Earlier we talked about issues like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly constructed web site can cost you business.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues quite easily. If there is a functionality you want to add to your website, just install a plugin that will help you get things done.

Want a plugin that will notify you immediately about any problems on your website such as hyperlinks not working, audios not streaming, graphics that aren’t displaying or even alert you if your entire website is down? No problems … there are WP 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 business solution? Again, no problem! There are several plugins that will help you sell products on your site and provide your users with full e-commerce features that allow them to choose and add items to a cart, use coupons, order using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally thousands of useful WP plugins that you can download and install on your site at $0 cost, or can be bought for a relatively inexpensive cost and will save you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WordPress Plugins)

You can learn more about plugins here:

• Using WordPress Plugins To Expand Your Web Site’s Features And Functionality

WordPress – An Immediate Website User Experience

In addition to being able to correct problems caused by a poorly-built web site, WordPress can also help you create a great user experience for your website users.

WordPress provides beautiful and visually-exciting themes that cover all kinds of uses and functional plugins that allow website users to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-driven site, WordPress themes, plugins and great content, you can create a rich user experience that will keep visitors returning again and again.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers will do research online before they make purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed with a focus on the customer, they will not return and simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website.

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

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