Are you missing out on business because of a poorly-constructed web site? A poorly-built website could end up losing you potential new clients and valuable business opportunities.

In a world where looks matter, the design of your web site can play a significant role in the success of your business. Your website is probably the first thing that your visitors see and this could influence their decision to purchase.

We do things online. Even if it’s only doing preliminary research, we will fire up our laptop and go visit someone’s website before deciding what to do next.

Now, try to see things from your customer’s viewpoint. How does your digital presence appear to visitors? Does your site invite them to draw closer and explore things further, or does it make people confused and unsure about what to do next?

What web visitors 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’ perceptions and their decision to buy from you.

Can WordPress Help Fix Your Poorly-Designed Website?

Let’s review some of the more important design issues that can affect your website’s results:

Web Design Problems

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

• Color – Bad color combinations can impact on your site’s results. This also applies to using text and background color. There are methods that can help you specify web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to make sure that the color combinations you select will display correctly across various mediums. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain aesthetically unexciting, outdated and just plain hard to read text can turn users away from your site. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic elements and 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 navigation menus, links, and other useful objects.
• Responsiveness – As digital information is now viewed using a range of devices with different-sized screens, it’s vitally important that your website’s design be responsive. If your website does not resize automatically to work across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will lose potential opportunities.

Web Site Functionality Problems

Common website functionality problems can include:

• Persistent errors – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a site where some hyperlinks don’t work, videos can’t play and images aren’t displaying. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable, especially if your aim is to come across as a professional. Your website is a reflection of your company. It’s important to ensure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and graphics are working at all times. Sometimes, these problems are caused by factors such as your hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to make sure that remain proactive and that you get issues addressed as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your web site offers users certain features, 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 users with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add items to a shopping cart, use coupons, complete purchases using credit cards 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-built website is the “user experience”.

An unsatisfactory user experience can leave a bad taste in visitors’ mouths and lead them to share their dissatisfaction across social networks, forums, review sites, comments, etc., bringing you unwanted negative publicity.

Here are just some common issues 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 web visitors 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. spreadsheets), 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 clients but also current customers. Things like search engine-friendly URLs, product and service categories and well-organized areas where your content is grouped or linked together can help provide users with a good experience.
• Stimulating Features – Users stay longer on sites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that are stimulating. To accomplish this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your website users. For example, draw attention to links pointing to product pages with professionally-taken product images next to well-written product descriptions. This is very effective and will help improve not just the user experience on your website, but can also help you generate more sales and conversions.
• Interactive Features – Another thing that helps to improve user experience on your site is providing interactive features that engage visitors, such as features that let them\visitors leave comments, 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 visitors to be able to navigate quickly through your site and access your data 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 most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that users feel comfortable interacting with you online. To reassure your visitors that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal compliance pages such as a business information page, privacy policy, terms of use, security information, earnings disclaimers, etc.

(Web design issues)

As the above shows, there are many areas that can lead to a poor user experience and negatively impact your business results online. If your web site isn’t designed in a user-friendly way, you run the risk of not only losing prospective customers but also some of current clients too.

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

First, be aware that getting a website overhaul can take some time and can also be somewhat costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you currently operate, especially if what needs doing requires editing web code extensively.

If you are considering having a new website built or redeveloping an existing web site, then we highly recommend that you consider using WordPress.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We currently provide more articles about WordPress on this site, but here are just a few key points to keep in mind about why you should seriously consider using WordPress:

WordPress Themes – Unique Web Design Features

WP themes are unique web site design template systems that let you immediately modify the look of your entire site without affecting the site’s content and modifying any of the core software.

There are thousands of professional looking themes created for WordPress site owners available that can be easily downloaded. Many themes are either freely available, or they are relatively inexpensive, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most WP themes are fully responsive and provide users with flexible and customizable options for changing your website’s design like the color, elements like menus and headers, page layouts and more. This is just one of the many things that make WordPress an ideal tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that works for your business.

Learn about themes here:

• A Basic Guide To Themes

WordPress – Powerful Features

Another compelling reason to choose WordPress is that WordPress gives users powerful functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

Plugins, like WordPress themes, integrate easily with your site to provide you with virtually unlimited new functionality.

Earlier we discussed problems in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly designed website could cost you money.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues quite inexpensively. If there is a functionality that needs to be integrated into your site, just install a plugin that will do exactly what you want done.

Need a plugin that will notify you immediately about any problems detected with your site like links not working, audios not playing, pictures that are missing or even tell you if your entire web site is down? No problems … there are WordPress plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know 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 solution? Again, no problem! There are several inexpensive WP plugins that will help you sell products online and provide your customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add products to a cart, use coupons, complete purchases with credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally thousands of useful plugins that you can install on your site and are freely available, or that are extremely well priced and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WordPress Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• Add New Features And Functionality To Your Web Site With Plugins

WordPress – An Interactive Web User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and exciting themes that cover all types of uses and applications and feature-rich plugins that allow visitors to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress site, WordPress themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a a highly interactive and engaging user experience that will keep users coming back for more.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers nowadays do extensive research online before they make purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rich user experience, consumers will simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website or better user experience.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you expand your business business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website please see other posts we have published on this site.

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