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

In a world where the way we project ourselves matter, the look of your web site can affect your business success. Your website is probably the first thing that your potential buyer sees and this could affect their purchasing decision.

Think about how most people do research about products and services nowadays. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we still jump online and go browse somebody’s web site before deciding what to do next.

Now, try to see things from your customer’s point of view. How does your website appear to them? Does it invite people to come and explore things further, or does it make people hesitant and unsure about where to go next?

What your visitors see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see in your screen) is only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can affect your web visitors’ experience and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Fix Your Poorly-Designed Website?

Let’s review a few key design issues that can affect your website’s results and performance:

Site Design Problems

Typical web design problems that can influence your prospect’s perception about your site include:

• Color – Poor color combinations affect your results. This also applies to your choice of text and background color. There are tools to pick web colors correctly and even safe web color palettes to make sure that the palettes you use will display predictably across different devices. If in doubt, seek the services of a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain unexciting, outdated or just plain ugly images can turn prospective clients away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic elements and overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you structure your pages can impact the way visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational menus, links, and other elements are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, page columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – As online information is now accessed using a range of devices with different-sized screens, it’s vitally important that your web design be responsive. If your website does not display well across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will lose opportunities.

Site Functionality Issues

Typical functionality issues can include some following:

• Persistent site errors – A huge turn-off for visitors is arriving on a page where some hyperlinks don’t work, videos don’t play and images are missing. Persistent errors are no longer acceptable, especially if you are trying to come across professionally. Your online presence reflects your company. It’s vitally important to make sure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and images are working at all times. In some cases, problems may be caused by factors like your hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to ensure that remain proactive and that you get issues addressed as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your site provides users certain features and functionalities, then make sure that these functionalities are not limited. For example, if you want to sell goods or services online, make sure that you provide users with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add items to a cart, enter discount coupons, complete purchases with a credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Normally, where your business suffers most noticeably because of a poorly-designed web site is the “user experience”.

A disappointing user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead them to share their frustrations in social media, forums, review sites, comments, etc., bringing you negative attention.

Common problems that can lead to a poor user experience include:

• User-Friendly – Your website must be user-friendly. Your service information should be easy to find. Your site visitors 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 files to your site (e.g. presentation slides), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organization – If your site content isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective clients but current customers as well. Things such as search engine-friendly links, product and service categories and clean areas where related content can be easily found provides visitors with a good experience.
• Stimulating Website – Users want websites that are easy to use, well organized, and that provide them with stimulating options. This requires finding a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your users. For example, draw attention to links pointing to your product pages with great product pictures with well-written product descriptions. This can be very effective and will help improve not only the user experience on your website, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• User Interactivity – Another aspect that helps visitors decide to stick around on your site is providing interactive features that engage your visitors, like 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 move quickly through your site and access your data without waiting around for pages to load, so site loading optimization is important.
• Compliant Site – One of the most important and often most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to ensure that users feel comfortable interacting with you online. To reassure your visitors that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your web site includes legal compliance pages like a business information page, privacy statement, 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 success online. If your site is poorly designed, you run the risk of not only losing prospective clients but also some of current customers as well.

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

First, understand that getting issues corrected on an existing website can take time and can be fairly costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you currently have, especially if what needs doing requires a lot of code writing.

If you are researching the process of having a new website developed or redesigning an existing web site, then we suggest that you seriously consider building or redesigning your site with the WordPress content management platform.

(WordPress can improve your website results!)

We currently provide more posts about the benefits and advantages of WordPress on this site, but here are just a few key points to keep in mind about why you should choose WordPress:

WordPress – Unique Web Design Features

WP themes are unique web design template systems that allow you to completely customize the look and feel of your site with the click of a mouse button.

There are thousands of great-looking themes for WordPress available that can be downloaded. Many themes are either free of charge, or they are extremely affordable, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes nowadays are responsive and provide site owners with highly customizable options for changing your website’s design such as the color, template elements like menus, headers, footers, page layouts and more. This is just one of the many things that make WordPress such a powerful tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that helps to improve your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• WP For Beginners – An Introduction To WordPress Themes

WordPress – Modular Functionality

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

WP plugins, like themes, integrate easily with your site to provide you with virtually unlimited expansion.

Earlier in this article we looked at issues like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly constructed website could end up losing you money.

WordPress plugins can help you overcome these issues quite easily. If there is a functionality that needs to be added to your site, just install a WP plugin that does what you want done.

Want a plugin that will let you know about any problems detected on your website such as hyperlinks not working, videos not streaming, pictures that are missing or even alert you if your entire website is down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about issues so you can correct these immediately!

Want a plugin that will transform your website into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce system? Again, no problem! There are several plugins that will help you sell goods or services online and provide your customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add products to a cart, apply discounts, pay with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and confirmations, etc.

And just like WP themes, there are thousands of great plugins designed for WordPress users that you can install on your website for free, or that are extremely affordable and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WP Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• Adding New Functionality To Your WP Site With Plugins

WordPress – An Enhanced User Experience

In addition to being able to correct issues caused by a poorly-built website, WordPress can also help you provide your visitors with a great user experience.

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and exciting themes that cover all types of uses and applications and functional plugins that allow website users to connect, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress website, WordPress themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a rich and enhanced user experience that will keep them returning for more.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers nowadays will do research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed with a focus on the customer, consumers will simply move on to another business with a better website.

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website or blog please see other posts we have published on this site.

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