Are you losing business because of a poorly-constructed website? A poorly-constructed web site could end up costing you valuable business.

In a world where attractive design matters, the way your web site looks can be important to your business success. Your website is the first thing that a web visitors see and this could affect their decision to purchase from you.

People are turning more than ever to the internet to find products and services. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we still jump online and go browse somebody’s website first before buying something in-store or online.

Now, put yourself in your customer’s position. How does your web site appear to others? Does it invite them to draw closer and explore things further, or does it make them hesitant and unsure about what to do next?

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

Can WordPress Help Fix Your Poorly-Designed Website?

Here are just some of the more important design issues that can affect your web site’s results:

Web Site Design Problems

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

• Color – Poor color schemes can impact on your website’s results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are methods to pick web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to help ensure that the colors you use will display correctly across different mediums. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain visually uninteresting, outdated and just plain old ugly graphics can easily result in users quickly losing interest in away from your website.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 and excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – The way your pages are structured can have an impact impact on the way users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigation items, links, and other objects.
• Responsiveness – As online information is now viewed through 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 valuable opportunities.

Website Functionality Issues

Typical functionality issues can include some or all of the following:

• Persistent errors – A huge turn-off for users is landing on a site where hyperlinks don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics aren’t showing. Persistent errors are no longer acceptable on a website, especially if you are trying to come across as a professional. Your web presence is a reflection of your business. It’s vitally important therefore, to ensure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and graphics are running smoothly at all times. Sometimes, these problems could be 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 issues repaired immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your web site offers visitors specific features, then make sure that these features are not limited. For example, if you intend to sell goods or services on your site, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to choose and add items to a cart, use discounts, complete purchases using credit cards or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Typically, where your business suffers most noticeably due to a poorly-constructed site is in the realm of the “user experience”.

A disappointing user experience can leave a bad taste in users mouths and lead them to share their disappointment in social networks, user forums, review sites, comments, etc., bringing you unwanted negative attention.

Here are some of the more common problems that can create a poor user experience:

• User-Friendly – Your site must be user-friendly. Information about your products and services should not be hard to find. Your customers want user-friendly features and they want to find what they are looking for quickly and with no hassle. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable information to your site (e.g. PDF forms and documents), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organization – If your website isn’t cleanly organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective clients but also existing customers. Things like search engine-friendly links, product and service categories and sections where topic-related content is grouped or linked together provides visitors with an enjoyable experience.
• Eye-Catching Features – Visitors stick around on websites that are easy to use, well organized, and that provide them with eye-catching options. This requires striking a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your users. For example, highlight links which direct customers to your product pages by inserting professionally-taken photos or illustrations with well-written product 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.
• User Interactivity – Another aspect that helps visitors decide to stick around on your website is providing interactive features that engage your visitors, such as allowing them to leave comments, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your support staff via a responsive help desk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … You also want visitors to browse quickly around your site and access your data without waiting around for content to load, so having your site optimized for faster loading pages is important.
• Compliance – One of the most important and often most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make users feel comfortable doing business with you online. To reassure your potential clients that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your site includes legal pages like a business contact page, privacy policy, terms and conditions of use, security information, FTC disclaimers, etc.

(Web site design issues)

As you can see, there are many areas that can lead to a poor user experience and impact your business results online. If your website isn’t designed in a user-friendly way, you run the serious risk of not only losing potential customers but also some of existing clients too.

Now … what if you have arrived here because you have an existing website with design issues that could be affecting your business?

First, understand that getting a complete website overhaul can take time and can be somewhat costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you have, especially if it requires extensive coding.

If you are researching the process of getting a new website developed or redeveloping an existing site, then we recommend that you consider using WordPress.

(WordPress can help to improve your website results!)

We plan to provide more in-depth 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 – Flexible Website Design

WordPress themes are unique web site design template systems that let you completely customize the look and feel of your site with just a few mouse clicks.

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

(WordPress Themes)

Most WordPress themes nowadays are responsive and provide users with highly customizable options for changing your site’s design such as color, elements like headers and footers, layouts and more. Themes are just one of the many things that make WordPress such a great tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that ultimately works for your business.

You can learn about WP themes here:

• Understanding Themes

WordPress – Virtually Unlimited Features

Another compelling reason to build your site using the WP CMS is that WordPress provides users with scalable functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

Plugins, like themes, integrate with your site to provide you with almost unlimited flexibility.

Earlier we discussed issues like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built web site can end up costing you money.

WP plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite easily. If there is a feature that needs to be integrated with your site, just install a plugin that will help you get things done.

Need a plugin that will let you know about any problems detected with your site such as hyperlinks not working, videos not streaming, pictures that are missing or even tell you if your entire website has gone down? No problems … there are WordPress plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about issues so you can take immediate corrective action!

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

And just like WP themes, there are tens of thousands of useful WP plugins that you can install on your website and are freely available, or you can purchase for a relatively small price, once again, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WP Plugins)

Learn more about WordPress plugins here:

• WP Plugins Extend Your Web Site’s Features

WordPress – An Enhanced Website User Experience

In addition to being able to correct problems caused by a poorly-constructed web site, WordPress can also help you create a great user experience for web users.

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and exciting themes that cover all kinds of uses and applications and plugins that allow customers to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-powered website, WordPress themes, plugins and great content, you can create a very rich and enhanced user experience that will keep your visitors returning again and again.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers will do extensive research online before they make purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed with a focus on the customer, these consumers will simply move on to another business with a better website or better website experience.

Hopefully, now you have 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 please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.

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