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

In a world where aesthetic principles matter, how your website looks can contribute significantly to the success of your business. Your website may be the first thing that a web visitor sees and this can affect their decision to purchase.

Think about how most people research products nowadays. Even if it’s only just preliminary research, we will typically fire up our laptop and go visit someone’s web site first before purchasing something in-store or online.

Now, try to see things from your prospect’s perspective. How does your web presence appear to visitors? Does it invite them to come and explore things further, or does it make them confused and cautious about where to go next?

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

Can WordPress Help Fix Bad Web Design?

Here are just a few key design problems that can affect your web site’s results and performance:

Web Design Issues

Common web design problems that can impact a potential customer’s perception of your site include some following:

• Color – Clashing color combinations can impact on your website’s results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are ways to choose web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to help make sure that the color combinations you decide on will display consistently across various web formats. If in doubt, consult a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain unattractive, outdated or just plain old hard to read typefaces can easily turn users off your site. Visitors can also be affected by careless inconsistencies in the design elements and overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – How your site is structured can have an impact effect on how visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigation items, links, and other useful objects.
• Responsiveness – As information is now viewed through various devices with different-sized screens, it’s important that the design of your website be fully responsive. If your web pages do not resize automatically to work on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you could lose potential business opportunities.

Functionality Problems

Typical website functionality problems include:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for users is arriving on a site where some hyperlinks don’t work, videos don’t play and graphics are missing. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable on any website, especially when you are trying to come across as a professional and reliable company. Your website is a reflection of your company. It’s vitally important to ensure that all your links, videos, and images remain working at all times. Sometimes, these problems are related to factors 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 attend to problems as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your website provides visitors specific functionality, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you intend to sell products online, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add products to a cart, enter discount codes, buy with credit cards or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

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

A disappointing user experience can leave a bad taste in visitors’ mouths and lead to venting their disappointment on social sites, user forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

Some common problems that can lead to a bad user experience include:

• User-Friendly – Your site should be easy to use and easy to navigate. Information about your products and services should not be hard to find. Your prospective 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 price lists), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organized – If your site content isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective buyers but also existing customers. Having features such as descriptive URLs, product and service categories and clean sections where topic-related content is grouped or linked together will provide visitors with an enjoyable experience.
• Compelling Web Site – Customers want sites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that are eye-catching. To accomplish this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your website users. For example, highlight hyperlinks that lead to your product pages by inserting beautiful product images beside well-written product descriptions. This is very effective and can help improve not just the user experience on your site, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• User Interactivity – Another area that helps users decide to stay longer on your website is to provide interactive features that engage users, such as features that let users comment on, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your staff via a responsive helpdesk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … Additionally, you want visitors to be able to navigate quickly within your site and access your information without waiting around for content to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Reassurance – One of the most important and often most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that users feel comfortable doing business with you online. To reassure your prospective buyers that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your site includes legal pages such as a contact page, privacy policy, terms of use, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(Site design problems)

As you can see, there are many areas that can lead to a poor user experience and impact your business success online. If your web site isn’t designed in a user-friendly way, you run the serious risk of not only losing prospective customers but also existing customers as well.

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

First, keep in mind that getting issues addressed on an existing website can take time and can also be somewhat costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you currently own, especially if it requires a lot of code editing.

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

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We plan to publish more in-depth posts about WordPress on this site, but here are just some key points to keep in mind about why you should choose WordPress:

Themes – Inexpensive Web Site Design

WP themes are unique website design template systems that enable you to instantly change the look and feel of your entire site with the click of a mouse button.

There are thousands of professionally designed themes available that you can install on your website. Many themes are either free, or they are relatively cheap to buy, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most WordPress themes nowadays are responsive and provide users with customizable features for changing design settings of your site such as the color, elements like headers and footers, page layouts and more. Themes are just one of the many things that make WordPress an ideal tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that helps to improve your business.

Learn about WordPress themes here:

• WordPress For Newbies – An Introduction To WordPress Themes

Plugins – Modular Scalability

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

Plugins, like themes, integrate with your website to provide you with almost unlimited extra features.

Earlier in this article we talked about issues like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly designed website could lose you business.

WordPress plugins can help you overcome these issues quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a feature you would like integrated with your website, just install a plugin that does exactly what you need done.

Need a plugin that will let you know about any problems detected with your website like hyperlinks not working, audios not playing, graphics that are missing or even alert you if your whole 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 take immediate corrective action!

Want a plugin that will turn your website into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce system? Again, no problem! There are several inexpensive WordPress plugins that will help you sell products online and provide your visitors with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to choose and add items to a cart, enter discount coupons, pay with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and email confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally thousands of useful WP plugins that can be easily downloaded at $0 cost, or are relatively cheap to purchase and will save you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WordPress Plugins)

Learn more about WordPress plugins here:

• Adding New Functionality To Your Web Site With Plugins

WordPress – An Enhanced Website User Experience

In addition to being able to correct issues caused by a poorly-built web site, WordPress can also help you create a great user experience for your visitors.

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and exciting themes that cover all needs and uses and applications and feature-rich plugins that allow website visitors to connect, engage and interact online 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 them returning for more.

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

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

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