Are you losing business because of a poorly-designed web site? Regardless of how great the quality of your services may be, a poorly-built web site could cost you many new customers.

In a world where appearances matter, how your web site looks can contribute significantly to the success of your business. Your website is the first thing that a web visitors see and this could affect their purchasing decision.

We mostly do things online. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we still fire up our laptop and go browse somebody’s site first before buying products in-store or online.

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

What prospective buyers see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see on your screen) is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can influence your web visitors’ perceptions and their decision to ultimately engage and do business with you.

Can WordPress Fix A Poorly-Designed Web Site?

Here are just some key design issues that can affect your web site:

Site Design Issues

Some of the most common design issues that can impact a prospect’s perception about your site include:

• Color – Unattractive color combinations can impact on your website’s results. This also applies to text and background color. There are tools to choose web colors correctly and even safe web colors to ensure that the color combinations you decide on will display predictably across different mediums. If in doubt, consult a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain unexciting, outdated and just plain old ugly images can result in users quickly losing interest in off your site. Visitors can also be affected by subtle inconsistencies in your design elements and overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you lay out your page content can impact the way visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other useful objects.
• Responsiveness – As information is now viewed by a range of devices with different-sized browsers, it’s vitally important that the design of your website be responsive. If your website does not display well across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will experience business losses.

Functionality Issues

Some common website functionality issues include:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for users is arriving on a website where hyperlinks don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics aren’t showing. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable, especially if your aim is to come across as a professional and dependable business. Your web presence is a reflection of your organization. It’s vitally important therefore, to ensure that all your links, videos, and images are working at all times. Sometimes, these problems are caused by things like your web hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to make sure that you’re consistently proactive and that you attend to all problems as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your web site provides users specific features, then make sure that these features are not limited. For example, if you would like to sell products online, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily choose and add products to a cart, enter coupons, order with a credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Typically, the area that suffers most due to a poorly-designed web site is in the realm of the “user experience”.

Anything less than a great user experience can leave a bad taste in users mouths and lead them to share their disappointment across social networks, forums, review sites, commenting sections, etc., bringing you negative attention.

Here are just some common issues that can lead to a poor user experience:

• User-Friendly – Your website needs to be easy to use and effortless to navigate. Your service information should not be kept in obscure corners. Your customers want user-friendly features and they want to find things as quickly and as effortlessly as possible. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable information to your site (e.g. forms and documents), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organization – If your site isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential customers but existing customers as well. Things such as search engine-friendly links, product and service categories and sections where related content can be easily found can help provide users with an enjoyable user experience.
• Eye-Catching Website – Users want websites that are user friendly, well organized, and that are stimulating. This requires striving for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling web copy that engages your website users. For example, draw attention to links pointing to product pages with great product images and well-written descriptions. This can be very effective and can help improve not just the user experience on your site, but can also help you generate more sales and conversions.
• User Interactivity – Another thing that helps to improve user experience on your site is to provide interactive features that engage your visitors, like features that let users comment on, 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 … Additionally, you want users to browse quickly through your website and access your data without waiting around for pages to load, so having your site optimized for faster loading pages is important.
• Reassurance – One of the most important and often most ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to ensure that users feel confident doing business with you online. To reassure your potential customers that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your site includes legal pages like a business information page, privacy policy, terms of usage, security information, earnings disclaimers, etc.

(Web design problems)

As the above shows, there are many areas that can lead to a poor user experience and negatively impact your business results online. If your web site is poorly constructed, you run the risk of not only losing prospective paying clients but also current customers too.

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

First, understand that getting issues addressed on an existing site can take time and can also end up being fairly costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you currently own, especially if what needs doing requires a lot of coding.

If you are currently in the process of getting a new website developed or upgrading an existing site, then we highly suggest that you consider using WordPress.

(WordPress can improve your website results!)

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

WordPress Themes – Instant Website Design

WordPress themes are unique website design templates that enable you to completely change the look of your site without affecting the site’s content and changing any underlying software.

There are thousands of professionally designed themes available that you can install on your website. Many themes are either free of charge, or are extremely affordable, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes for WordPress nowadays are fully responsive and provide you with highly customizable options for changing the design on your site like the color, elements like menus, headers, footers, 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 ultimately helps your business.

Learn about themes here:

• WP For Newbies – An Overview Of WP Themes

Plugins – Modular Expansion

Another compelling reason to choose the WordPress CMS is that WordPress provides site owners with modular functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

WordPress plugins, like WordPress themes, integrate with your site to provide you with virtually unlimited extra features.

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

WordPress plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite easily. If there is a feature you need to integrate with your website, just install a plugin that will get what you need done.

Need a plugin that will notify you immediately about any problems detected with your site like hyperlinks not working, videos not streaming, pictures that aren’t displaying or even tell you if your entire 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!

Need a plugin that will transform your site into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce system? Again, no problem! There are several inexpensive WP plugins that will help you sell products on your site and provide your users with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily choose and add items to a shopping cart, use coupons, complete their purchases with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are thousands of fantastic plugins that you can install on your website and are freely available, or are extremely well priced and will save you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WP Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• Adding New Features And Functionality To Your Site With WP Plugins

WordPress – An Enhanced Web User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful, professional and exciting themes that cover all types of applications and feature-rich plugins that allow visitors to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-driven site, WordPress themes, plugins and great content, you can create a rich user experience that will keep users returning to your website.

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 with a better website.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you expand your business business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website please see other posts we have published on this site.

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