Are you missing out on prospects because of poor web design? A poorly-constructed web site could end up costing you many new customers.

In a world where beautiful design sells, your website’s design can play a significant role in the success of your business. Your website is probably the first thing that a web visitor sees and this could influence their purchasing decision.

We typically mostly do things online. Even if it’s only just preliminary research, we still jump online and go browse a web site before taking the next step.

Now, try to see things from your customer’s point of view. How does your web presence appear to other people? Does it invite them to come and explore things further, or does it make people hesitant and unsure about what to do next?

How your website looks is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can affect your visitors’ thoughts and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Help You Fix Your Poorly-Constructed Web Site?

Let’s take a look at some of the more important design issues that can affect your site:

Web Site Design Problems

Typical web design problems that can affect a potential customer’s perception about your website include:

• Color – Clashing color schemes affect your results. This also applies to your choice of text and background color. There are tools that can help you pick web colors correctly and even safe web color palettes you can use to ensure that the palettes you want to use will display correctly across different systems. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically uninteresting, outdated and just plain hard to read fonts can easily turn prospective clients off your website. Visitors can also be affected by careless inconsistencies in your design elements and overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – How you lay out your page content can affect how users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other objects.
• Responsiveness – As websites are 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 display well across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you may experience potential loss of customers.

Site Functionality Problems

Some common website functionality problems may include:

• Persistent website errors – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a site where links don’t work, videos don’t play and images aren’t showing. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable, especially if you are trying to come across as a professional. Your web presence is a reflection of your business. It’s important therefore, to make sure that all your links, videos, and graphics remain up and running all the time. Sometimes, these issues are caused by external things like your 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 web site provides users certain features or functionalities, then make sure that these functionalities are not limited. For example, if you would like to sell products on your site, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily choose and add items to a cart, enter discount codes, complete their orders using a credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Normally, where your business suffers most noticeably because of a poorly-designed web site is the “user experience”.

An unsatisfactory user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead to sharing their dissatisfaction in social sites, user forums, review sites, comments, etc., bringing you unwanted negative attention.

Here are just some of the most common issues that can create a poor user experience:

• User-Friendly – Your website must be easy to use and effortless to navigate. Information about your products and services should not be kept in obscure areas. Your visitors want user-friendly features and they want to find things quickly and without disappointment. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable files to your site (e.g. videos), make sure that users are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organization – If your web site isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential customers but also existing clients. Having features like descriptive URLs, product and service categories and sections where your content can be easily found will provide users with an enjoyable user experience.
• Compelling Site – Visitors stay longer on websites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that are stimulating. This means finding a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your website users. For example, draw attention to links which direct customers to product pages with great images next to well-written descriptions. This is very effective and can help you improve not only the user experience on your site, but also grow your sales and conversions.
• Engaging Website – Another area that helps to improve user experience on your site is providing interactive features that engage your users, 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 … Additionally, you want users to move quickly within your site and access your information without waiting around for pages 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 comfortable doing business with you online. To reassure your prospective buyers that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal compliance pages such as a business contact page, privacy policy, terms and conditions of usage, security information, earnings disclaimers, etc.

(Website design problems)

As the above shows, there are many areas that can contribute to a poor user experience and negatively impact your business results online. If your site is poorly designed, you run the risk of not only losing potential customers but also your current customers too.

Now … what if you have arrived found this information because you have an existing site with design issues that may be affecting your business?

First, be aware that getting issues fixed on an existing website can take time and can end up being fairly costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you currently own, especially if the work requires editing web code.

If you are currently researching the process of getting a new website built or overhauling an existing website, then we suggest that you consider choosing the WordPress content management platform.

(WordPress can improve your website results!)

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

Themes – Unique Website Design Features

WordPress themes are unique web site design templates that let you quickly modify the look of your entire website without touching the website’s content and modifying the core software functionality.

There are literally thousands of professional looking WordPress themes available that can be downloaded. Many themes are either free, or they are extremely well priced, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes are responsive and provide users with customizable features for changing design settings of your website like color, template elements like headers, footers, menus and styles, layouts and more. Themes are just part of what makes WordPress such a great tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that ultimately helps to improve your business.

Learn about WP themes here:

• WordPress For Newbies – An Overview Of WP Themes

WordPress Plugins – Modular Features

Another great reason to choose the WordPress web content publishing platform is that WordPress gives users modular functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

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

Earlier we talked about areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly designed web site could lose you customers.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a feature that needs to be in your website, just install a WP plugin that will get the job done.

Want a plugin that will let you know about any issues on your site such as hyperlinks not working, videos not streaming, pictures that aren’t showing or even alert you if your entire website is down? No problems … there are WordPress plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about problems so you can take immediate corrective action!

Need 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 goods or services on your site and provide your users with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to choose and add items to a cart, use coupons, purchase using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and email confirmations, etc.

And just like WordPress themes, there are tens of thousands of great WP plugins that can be easily downloaded and are freely available, or are relatively cheap and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WP Plugins)

You can learn more about plugins here:

• WordPress Plugins – Expanding Your Website’s Features

WordPress – An Immediate User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful and exciting themes that cover all kinds of uses and feature-rich plugins that allow visitors to connect, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-powered website, WordPress themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a rich and interactive user experience that will keep them returning for more.

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

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you grow your business business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business web site please see other posts we have published on this site.

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