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

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

People are now turning more and more to the internet to find products and services. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we will instinctively jump online and go browse somebody’s website first before purchasing goods in-store or online.

Now, try to see things from your customer’s perspective. How does your web presence appear to others? Does your site invite people to enter and explore things further, or does it make them hesitant and cautious about where to go next?

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

Can WordPress Help Fix Your Poorly-Designed Web Site?

Let’s take a look at some key design problems that can affect your web site:

Website Design Issues

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

• Color – Poor color combinations can affect your results. This also applies to using text and background color. There are tools that can help you choose web colors correctly and even safe web colors to help ensure that the palettes you decide on will display correctly across different web formats. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically unpleasant, outdated or just plain hard to read text can easily turn visitors away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by design inconsistencies and excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – How your page content is arranged can impact the way users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigational menus, links, and other useful objects.
• Responsiveness – As websites are now accessed using various devices with different-sized browsers, it’s vitally important that your website’s design be fully responsive. If your web pages do not resize automatically to display your content across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will lose opportunities.

Functionality Problems

Some of the most common website functionality problems can include:

• Frequent errors – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a website where some hyperlinks don’t work, videos don’t play and graphics are missing. Persistent errors are no longer acceptable for any website, especially when you are trying to come across professionally. Your website reflects your company. It’s important therefore, to make sure that all your links, videos, and images are up and running at all times. In some cases, problems are related to 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 all problems immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your site offers users certain functionality, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you want to sell products on your site, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily choose and add items to a shopping cart, use coupons, buy with credit cards or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Invariably, where visitors suffer most because of a poorly-designed site is in the realm of the “user experience”.

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

Some of the more common issues that can cause a poor user experience include the following:

• Ease Of Use – Your site must be user-friendly. Your service information should not be hard to find. Your web visitors want user-friendly features and they want to find things quickly and with minimal hassle. 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.
• Organization – If your site isn’t cleanly organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective buyers but also current customers. Features such as search engine-friendly URLs, product and service categories and sections where related content can be easily found can help provide users with a good experience.
• Stimulating Features – Customers stick around on websites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that provide them with eye-catching options. To accomplish this you need to strive for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your users. For example, highlight hyperlinks that point to product pages by inserting eye-catching photos or illustrations with well-written product descriptions. This is very effective and will help improve not only the user experience on your website, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• Engaging Website – Another thing that helps to improve user experience on your site is providing interactive features that engage users, such as the ability to comment on, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your staff via a responsive help desk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … Additionally, you want users to browse quickly around your site and access your data without waiting around for content to load, so having your site optimized for page loading speed is important.
• Trustworthy Website – 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 potential customers that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your site includes legal compliance pages like a contact page, privacy statement, terms of usage, security information, FTC disclaimers, etc.

(Web 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 website is poorly constructed, you run the risk of not only losing potential clients but also some of current clients too.

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

First, understand that getting a complete website overhaul can take some time and can end up being somewhat costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you currently have, especially if it requires rewriting web code extensively.

If you are considering getting a new website developed or upgrading an existing web site, then we suggest that you seriously consider using the WordPress web site management platform.

(WordPress can help to improve your website results!)

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

WP Themes – Customizable Website Design

WP themes are unique website design template systems that enable you to quickly customize the look and feel of your website with the click of a mouse button.

There are literally thousands of professionally designed themes available that you can install on your website. Many of these are either free of charge, or they are extremely well priced, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes for WordPress nowadays are fully responsive and provide site owners with flexible and customizable options for changing the design of your website such as color, elements like menus and headers, page layouts and more. This is just part of what makes WordPress an ideal tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that helps to improve your business.

Learn about WP themes here:

• A Basic Guide To WP Themes

Plugins – Modular Functionality

Another great reason to choose WordPress is that WordPress gives you scalable functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

Plugins, like WP themes, integrate with your website to provide you with almost unlimited scalability.

Earlier we discussed issues like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly designed website could end up costing you money.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a feature you need to add to your site, just install a WP plugin that gets things done.

Want a plugin that will let you know about any issues detected on your website like links not working, audios not streaming, graphics that are missing or even tell you if your entire website is down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about problems so you can correct these immediately!

Need a plugin that will transform your site into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce solution? Again, no problem! There are several WP plugins that will help you sell products on your site and provide your customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to choose and add products to a cart, enter discounts, complete their orders with credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices and email confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are thousands of fantastic WP plugins that can be easily downloaded for free, or are extremely affordable and will save you thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WordPress Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• WordPress Plugins – The Easy Way To Expand Your Website’s Features And Functionality

WordPress – A Rich User Experience

In addition to being able to address problems caused by a poorly-built web site, WordPress can also help you give your visitors a great user experience.

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and exciting themes that cover all types of uses and applications and plugins that allow customers to connect, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-powered website, WP themes, plugins and great content, you can create a very rich and interactive user experience that will keep them coming back to your site.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers will do research online before they make purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rich and engaging user experience, they will not return and simply move on to another business with a better website.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit our related posts section.

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