Are you missing out on business because of a poorly-designed web site? No matter how strong your services are, a poorly-built web site can end up costing you many new customers.

In a world where aesthetic principles matter, how your website looks can contribute significantly to your business success. Your website may be the first thing that a visitors see and this could influence their purchasing decision.

Think about how you research products nowadays. Even if it’s just doing preliminary research, we still switch to our smart device and go browse somebody’s site before making our next move.

Now, put yourself in your prospect’s position. How does your web site appear to online users? Does it invite people to enter and explore things further, or does it make them confused and unsure about where to go next?

The way your website looks is only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can affect your visitors’ thoughts and their decision to ultimately buy from you.

Can WordPress Fix A Poorly-Built Website?

Let’s review some key design problems that can affect your website:

Web Site Design Issues

Some common web design issues that can impact your user’s perception about your website include some following:

• Color – Unattractive color combinations affect your site’s results. This also applies to your choice of text and background color. There are ways to pick web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to make sure that the color schemes you select will display correctly across different web formats. If in doubt, consult a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically unattractive, outdated or just plain hard to read text can easily result in users quickly losing interest in away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by subtle inconsistencies in your design elements or excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – How you structure your pages can significantly impact how users navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational menus, links, and other elements are used, where menus are positioned on your site, page columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – As websites are now accessed by various devices with different-sized screens, it’s vitally important that your website’s design be responsive. If your web pages do not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will lose valuable opportunities.

Website Functionality Problems

Typical website functionality problems can include some or all of the following:

• Frequent errors – A huge turn-off for users is landing on a page where hyperlinks don’t work, videos don’t play and images are missing. Frequent errors are no longer acceptable in a website, especially when your goal is to come across professionally. Your website reflects your organization. It’s vitally important to make sure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and images remain up and running all the time. Sometimes, these problems are related to things such as your web hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to make sure that remain proactive and that you get problems repaired immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your site provides users specific features, then make sure that these functionalities are not limited. For example, if you intend to sell goods or services online, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily choose and add products to a shopping cart, apply discount coupons, purchase with a credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Normally, the area that is most affected due to a poorly-built web site is the “user experience”.

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

Some common issues that can create a disappointing user experience include the following:

• User-Friendly – Your site needs to be easy to use and intuitive to navigate around in. Information about your products and services should not be kept in obscure places. Your prospective clients want user-friendly features and they want to find what they are looking for quickly and without disappointment. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable information to your site (e.g. presentation slides), 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 prospective buyers but also existing customers. Features like descriptive links, product and service categories and sections where topic-related content is grouped or linked together provides users with an enjoyable user experience.
• Stimulating Site – Users stay longer on websites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that provide them with stimulating options. To achieve this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your users. For example, highlight hyperlinks that direct users to your product pages with great graphics next to well-crafted product descriptions. This is effective and will help improve not only the user experience on your site, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• Engaging Features – Another aspect that helps visitors decide to stay longer on your website is to provide interactive features that engage your users, like 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 visitors to move quickly around your website and access your information without waiting around for content to load, so having your site optimized for page loading speed 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 confident doing business with you online. To reassure your potential buyers that your business is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your website includes legal compliance pages like a business contact page, privacy policy, terms and conditions of usage, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(Website design problems)

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

Now … what if you have arrived on our site because you currently have an existing website with design problems that could be affecting your business?

First, understand that getting issues fixed on an existing website can take time and can also end up being fairly costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you operate, especially if it requires a lot of web development.

If you are considering getting a new website built or redeveloping an existing web site, then we suggest that you consider building or redesigning your site with WordPress.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We currently share a lot more in-depth posts about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress on this site, but here are just a few things to keep in mind about why you should consider WordPress:

Themes – Inexpensive Website Design

WordPress themes are unique web design template systems that let you immediately customize the look of your website without touching the website’s content or modifying the underlying software.

There are literally thousands of great-looking themes created for WordPress users available that can be downloaded. Many of these are either free, or can be bought relatively cheaply, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WP Themes)

Most WP themes nowadays are fully responsive and provide users with customizable features for changing your website’s design like color, template elements like menus and headers, page layouts and more. Themes are just one of the many things that make WordPress such a powerful tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that ultimately works for your business.

Learn about themes here:

• WP For Newbies – An Overview Of WP Themes

Plugins – Virtually Unlimited Features

Another compelling reason to choose the WordPress CMS is that WordPress provides you with almost unlimited features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

WP plugins, like WP themes, integrate with your site to provide you with almost unlimited new functionality.

Earlier in this post we talked about issues like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly constructed website could end up costing you potential clients.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a feature that needs to be added to your site, just install a plugin that does what you want your site to do.

Want a plugin that will let you know about any issues with your website like hyperlinks not working, audios not streaming, pictures that are missing or even alert you if your whole web site has gone down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about problems so you can correct these immediately!

Want a plugin that will turn your website into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce business solution? Again, no problem! There are several WordPress plugins that will help you sell products online and provide your customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to select and add products to a cart, use discount codes, purchase with credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like WP themes, there are literally thousands of great plugins that can be easily downloaded free of charge, or that 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:

• Using WordPress Plugins – The Easy Way To Expand Your Site’s Features

WordPress – An Engaging Web User Experience

In addition to being able to correct problems caused by a poorly-designed web site, WordPress can also help you provide your customers with a great user experience.

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

As stated earlier, consumers do research online before they make purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed with the customer in mind, these consumers will not return and simply move on to another business that does provide them with a better website or website experience.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.

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