Are you missing out on business because of a poorly-constructed site? A poorly-constructed web site could end up costing you valuable business.

In a world where first impressions matter, the design of your web site is very important to your business success. Your website is probably the first thing that a prospective buyers see and this can influence their decision to purchase from you.

We do things online. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we still turn to our smart phone and go browse somebody’s site before taking the next step.

Now, put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. How does your website appear to other people? Does your site invite them to approach and explore things further, or does it make people hesitant and cautious about where to go next?

What your potential clients 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 influence your visitors’ thoughts and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Help You Fix Poor Web Design?

Let’s review a few key design issues that can affect your site’s results:

Site Design Issues

Some common design issues that can influence a user’s perception about your site include the following:

• Color – Clashing color schemes affect your results. This also applies to text and background color. There are tools to choose web colors correctly and even safe web colors to help ensure that the colors you decide on will display predictably across different devices. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain unpleasant, outdated or just plain hard to read text can easily turn visitors off your website. Visitors can also be affected by overall design inconsistencies or excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you lay out your page content can affect how users navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other elements are used, where menus are positioned on your site, content columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – Since websites are now viewed by a range of devices with different-sized browsers, it’s important that your web design be responsive. If your website does not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will lose valuable customers.

Site Functionality Issues

Some common website functionality issues include the following:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a site where links don’t work, videos don’t play and graphics aren’t showing. Persistent site errors are no longer acceptable on any website, especially when you are trying to come across as a professional and dependable business. Your website reflects your business. It’s important therefore, to ensure that all your links, videos, and images remain up and running all the time. Sometimes, these issues may be caused by things such as your hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to make sure that remain proactive and that you get problems fixed immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your web site provides users specific features and functionalities, then make sure that these features are not limited. For example, if you intend to sell products on your site, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily choose and add products to a shopping cart, use coupons, purchase with credit cards or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts, and confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Normally, where customers suffer the most because of a poorly-constructed website is in the realm of the “user experience”.

An unpleasant user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead them to vent their dissatisfaction on social media, forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

Common issues that can create a bad user experience include:

• User-Friendly – Your site must be easy to use and effortless to navigate around in. Information about your products and services should be easy to locate. Your web visitors want user-friendly features and they want to find what they are looking for as quickly and as effortlessly as possible. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable content to your site (e.g. forms and documents), 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 prospective clients but also existing clients. Things such as search engine-friendly links, product and service categories and sections where your content is grouped or linked together can help provide users with a good experience.
• Eye-Catching Site – Visitors stick around on sites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that provide them with stimulating options. This means achieving a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your website users. For example, highlight hyperlinks pointing to product pages by inserting eye-popping photos or illustrations beside well-written product descriptions. This is effective and can help you improve not only the user experience on your site, but can also help you generate more sales and conversions.
• Interactive Website – Another area that helps to improve user experience on your website is providing interactive features that engage customers, such as features that let users comment on, 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 navigate quickly around your site and access your information without waiting around for pages to load, so having your site optimized for page loading speed is important.
• Compliant Site – One of the most important and often most ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that users feel comfortable interacting with you online. To reassure your web visitors that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your site includes legal pages such as a business information page, privacy statement, terms and conditions of usage, security information, earnings disclaimers, etc.

(Web design problems)

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

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

First, keep in mind that getting issues addressed on an existing site can take some time and can end up being quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you currently have, especially if what needs doing requires a lot of code editing.

If you are currently considering having a new website developed or redeveloping an existing website, then we recommend that you consider using WordPress.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We currently provide a lot more information about WordPress on this site, but here are just some of the things to keep in mind about why you should seriously consider using WordPress:

WordPress – Instant Website Design

WordPress themes are unique website design templates that allow you to easily change the look of your entire site with the click of a mouse button.

There are thousands of professionally designed WP themes available that you can download and install on your site. Many of these are either free of charge, or they are relatively cheap, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WP Themes)

Most WP themes are fully responsive and provide website owners with flexible and customizable features for changing the design of your site like color, elements like menus and headers, 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 helps your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• WP For Business – An Overview Of Themes

WordPress – Modular Expansion

Another compelling reason to choose the WP web content publishing software is that WordPress gives users expandable functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

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

Earlier we looked at issues in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly designed web site can cost you business.

WP plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite easily. If there is a feature you need to integrate into your site, just install a WordPress plugin that will get the job done.

Need a plugin that will let you know about any issues detected with your website such as hyperlinks not working, audios not playing, images that are missing 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 turn your website into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce business solution? Again, no problem! There are several inexpensive and easy-to-use plugins that will help you sell products online and provide your visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily choose and add products to a shopping cart, apply discounts, purchase using credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like WP themes, there are thousands of useful plugins that you can download and easily install on your website at $0 cost, or that are relatively cheap to buy and will save you thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WordPress Plugins)

Learn more about WP plugins here:

• WordPress Plugins – The Easy Way To Enhance Your Website’s Features

WordPress – A Rich Web User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful and exciting themes that cover all kinds of uses and functional plugins that allow visitors to contact, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-driven website, WP themes, plugins and great content, you can create a rich and immediate user experience that will keep users coming back to your website.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers do research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rich user experience, these consumers will simply move on to another business with a better website.

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

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