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

In a world where aesthetic principles matter, the look of your website can play a significant role in the success of your business. Your website is the first thing that a web visitors see and this could influence their purchasing decision.

Think about how you research businesses nowadays. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we still jump online and go visit somebody’s site before taking the next step.

Now, try to see things from your prospect’s point of view. How does your website appear to visitors? Does it invite people to come and explore things further, or does it make them hesitant and cautious about what to do next?

What potential customers see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see in your screen) is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other factors than can affect your visitors’ thoughts and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Fix Poor Web Design?

Here are just a few key design problems that can affect your web site:

Web Design Issues

Some common web design issues that can influence a visitor’s perception of your website include some following:

• Color – Bad color schemes affect your website’s results. This also applies to using text and background color. There are tools to select web colors correctly and even safe web colors to help ensure that the colors you decide on will display correctly across different web formats. If in doubt, consult a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain unexciting, outdated or just plain old hard to read typefaces can easily turn prospects away from your site. Visitors can also be affected by subtle inconsistencies in the design elements or overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – How you structure your content can impact how users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigation menus, links, and other elements are used, where menus are positioned on your site, page columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – Since business information is now viewed through a range of devices with different-sized browsers, it’s vitally important that your website’s design be fully responsive. If your website does not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will lose customers.

Functionality Issues

Typical functionality problems include:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for users is landing on a site where some hyperlinks don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics aren’t showing. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable, especially when you are trying to come across professionally. Your website is a reflection of your organization. It’s important to ensure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and images remain running smoothly all the time. In some cases, these problems are caused by external things like your hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to make sure that remain proactive and that you attend to problems immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your web site offers users specific functionality, then make sure that these functionalities are not limited. For example, if you plan to sell products on your site, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add products to a shopping cart, use coupons, purchase using a credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Normally, where prospective customers suffer the most because of a poorly-built site is the “user experience”.

Anything less than a great user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead to sharing their disappointment in social sites, user forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

Some common issues that can create a poor user experience can include some of following:

• User-Friendly – Your site must be easy to use and effortless to navigate. Information about your products and services should not be hard to find. Your visitors want user-friendly features and they want to find things quickly and with no hassle. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable information to your site (e.g. spreadsheets), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organization – If your site isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential customers but also current customers. Features like search engine-friendly links, product and service categories and well-organized areas where related content can be easily found will help provide users with a good experience.
• Compelling Web Site – Users stay longer on websites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that are eye-catching. To achieve this you need to find a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your users. For example, draw attention to links pointing to product pages by inserting eye-popping photos or illustrations beside well-crafted product descriptions. This is effective and can help you improve not only the user experience on your site, but can also help you get more sales and conversions.
• Engaging Features – Another aspect that helps users want to stick around on your website is to provide interactive features that engage your customers, such as the ability 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 within your site and access your data without waiting around for content to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Trustworthy Website – One of the most important and often most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to ensure that users feel comfortable doing business with you online. To reassure your web visitors that you are 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, FTC 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 web site is poorly built, you run the risk of not only losing prospective clients but also existing clients as well.

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

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

If you are currently in the process of having a new website developed or upgrading an existing website, then we suggest that you seriously consider using the WordPress web site management platform.

(WordPress can help you improve your website results!)

We currently publish a lot more in-depth posts 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:

WP Themes – Unique Web Design Features

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

There are thousands of great-looking themes available that you can download and easily install on your website. Many of these are either free, or they are extremely affordable, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes for WordPress are fully responsive and provide site owners with customizable features for changing design settings of your website such as the color, template elements like menus, headers, footers, page layouts and more. Themes are just one of the many things that make WordPress such a great tool for helping you create a design for your website that ultimately works for your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• WP For Business – An Overview Of Themes

WordPress – Powerful Scalability

Another compelling reason to choose the WP website management platform is that WordPress provides you with modular functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

Plugins, like themes, integrate with your site to provide you with virtually unlimited features or functionality.

Earlier in this post we discussed problems in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly designed web site can end up losing you money.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues quite easily. If there is a feature you would like integrated with your site, just install a WP plugin that will get what you need done.

Want a plugin that will let you know about any issues detected with your site like links not working, videos not playing, graphics that are missing or even alert you if your entire web site 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 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 shopping cart, enter discounts, buy with credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally thousands of great plugins that you can install on your site and are freely available, or you can purchase for a inexpensive cost, once again, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WordPress Plugins)

Learn more about WP plugins here:

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

WordPress – An Enhanced Web User Experience

In addition to being able to correct 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 applications and plugins that allow website visitors to contact, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress site, WP themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a very rich and interactive user experience that will keep visitors returning again and again.

As stated earlier, consumers will do research online before they make a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed with a focus on the customer, consumers will simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website or user experience.

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

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