Are you losing customers because of poor web design? A poorly-constructed website can end up losing you prospective buyers and a lot of money.

In a world where attractive things matter, your website’s design can play a significant part in your business success. Your website may be the first thing that your visitors see and this could affect their purchasing decision.

Think about how you research services nowadays. Even if it’s just for doing preliminary research, we still switch to our mobile phone and go visit somebody’s site first before purchasing something in-store or online.

Now, try to see things from your visitor’s viewpoint. How does your web presence appear to other people? Does your site invite them to draw closer and explore things further, or does it make them hesitant and unsure about what to do next?

What your web visitors 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 affect your visitors’ experience and their decision to do business with you.

Can WordPress Help You Fix Your Poorly-Designed Website?

Let’s take a look at some key design issues that can affect your website’s results:

Web Site Design Issues

Typical design problems that can impact your prospect’s perception about your website include:

• Color – Bad color schemes can affect 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 you can use to make sure that the colors you want to use will display correctly across different systems. If in doubt, consult a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically unappealing, outdated or just plain old hard to read typefaces can result in users quickly losing interest in away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by overall design inconsistencies and overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – The way your content is structured can impact the way users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigation menus, links, and other guiding features like search boxes are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, page columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – Since digital 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 display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will experience business losses.

Functionality Problems

Typical website functionality problems include the following:

• 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 aren’t showing. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable, especially if your goal is to come across professionally. Your digital presence is a reflection of your organization. It’s important therefore, to make sure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and graphics are working at all times. In some cases, these problems are caused by external factors like your hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to make sure that you’re consistently proactive and that all problems get repaired immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your web site provides visitors specific functionality, then make sure that these features are not limited. For example, if you plan to sell goods or services on your site, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily choose and add products to a cart, apply discount coupons, purchase with a credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Invariably, the area that is most affected due to a poorly-built website is in the realm of the “user experience”.

An unsatisfactory user experience can leave a bad taste in visitors’ mouths and lead to venting their dissatisfaction across social sites, user forums, review sites, commenting sections, etc., bringing you negative publicity.

Typical problems that can cause a disappointing user experience include:

• User-Friendly – Your site must be easy to use and effortless to navigate around in. Your product information should not be hard to find. Your site visitors 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. presentation slides), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organized – If your website isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential clients but also existing customers. Providing features such as search engine-friendly links, product and service categories and sections where your content can be easily found will help provide visitors with an enjoyable user experience.
• Stimulating Web Site – Visitors want sites that are user friendly, well organized, and that are stimulating. This requires aiming for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your visitors. For example, highlight hyperlinks that direct visitors to product pages with eye-catching product pictures next to well-written product descriptions. This is effective and will help improve not just the user experience on your website, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• Engaging Site – Another aspect that helps visitors decide to stay longer on your site is providing interactive features that engage your customers, such as allowing them to leave comments, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your support staff via a responsive helpdesk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … Additionally, you want users to browse quickly around your website and access your information without waiting around for content to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Compliance – One of the most important and often most ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to ensure that users feel comfortable doing business with you online. To reassure your prospective customers that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal pages like a business information page, privacy statement, terms and conditions of usage, security information, affiliate disclaimers, etc.

(Web design issues)

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 website is poorly constructed, you run the risk of not only losing potential customers but also your current clients too.

Now … what if you have arrived found this post because you currently have an existing website with design problems that are affecting your business?

First, keep in mind that getting issues addressed on an existing website can take time and can be fairly costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you operate, especially if it requires editing web code.

If you are currently considering getting a new website built or redeveloping an existing website, then we suggest that you consider choosing WordPress.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

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

WP Themes – Instant Website Design

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

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

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes built for WordPress nowadays are responsive and provide you with highly customizable options for changing the design on your site such as the color, elements like headers and footers, page layouts and more. This is just one of the many things that make WordPress an ideal tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that works for your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• WP For Beginners – An Introduction To Themes

WordPress – Virtually Unlimited Scalability

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

Plugins, like WordPress themes, integrate easily with your site to provide you with virtually unlimited features.

Earlier we discussed areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built website can lose you money.

WP plugins can help you overcome these issues quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a feature you would like integrated into your website, just install a plugin that gets things done.

Need a plugin that will notify you immediately about any problems on your website such as hyperlinks not working, videos not playing, graphics that aren’t showing or even tell you if your whole website is down? No problems … there are WordPress plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about issues 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 WordPress plugins that will help you sell goods or services on your site and provide your customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to select and add items to a shopping cart, apply discount coupons, pay with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are thousands of great WordPress plugins that can be easily downloaded at $0 cost, or that are extremely affordable, once again, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WP Plugins)

You can learn more about plugins here:

• WordPress Plugins – Expand Your Web Site’s Capabilities

WordPress – An Immediate Web User Experience

In addition to being able to correct problems caused by a poorly-designed website, WordPress can also help you create a great user experience for your customers.

WordPress provides beautifully-designed 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 website, WordPress themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a very rich user experience that will keep people returning again and again.

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

Hopefully, this post 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 the WordPress web content management software please see our related posts section.

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