Are you missing out on business because of poor web design? No matter how strong your services are, a poorly-constructed web site could end up losing you many new customers.

In a world where appearances matter, your website’s design can be very important to your business success. Your website is the first thing that a visitors see and this could influence their decision to use your services.

We do it online. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we will fire up our laptop and go visit a web site first before purchasing goods in-store or online.

Now, put yourself in your customer’s shoes. How does your web site appear to visitors? Does it invite people to approach and explore things further, or does it make them hesitant and unsure about what to do next?

What your prospects 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’ thoughts and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Fix Poor Web Design?

Let’s review some key design problems that can affect your website:

Web Design Issues

Typical design issues that can affect a visitor’s perception about your site include some following:

• Color – Bad color combinations affect your results. This also applies to using text and background color. There are ways to specify web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to ensure that the colors you select will display predictably across various mediums. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain uninteresting, outdated and just plain old hard to read typefaces can result in users quickly losing interest in away from your site. Visitors can also be affected by overall design inconsistencies or excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – How your site is laid out can have an impact effect on how users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other objects.
• Responsiveness – Since information is now accessed through a range of devices with different-sized browsers, it’s important that your web design be fully responsive. If your website does not resize automatically to fit your information across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you could lose potential business opportunities.

Functionality Problems

Some of the most common functionality issues may include the following:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is arriving on a site where some links don’t work, videos can’t play and images aren’t displaying. Persistent site errors are no longer acceptable on any website, especially if you are trying to come across as a professional. Your digital presence is a reflection of your business. It’s important to make sure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and graphics are running smoothly at all times. In some cases, problems are related to things such as your hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to ensure that you’re consistently proactive and that you attend to all problems as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your website offers visitors certain features or functionalities, then make sure that these functionalities are not limited. For example, if you intend to sell goods or services online, make sure that you provide users with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add items to a shopping cart, apply coupons, purchase using a credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Normally, where your business suffers most noticeably due to a poorly-built web site is the “user experience”.

A poor user experience can leave a bad taste in users mouths and lead to venting their disappointment across social sites, forums, review sites, commenting sections, etc., bringing you negative attention.

Here are some of the most common issues that can create a poor user experience:

• User-Friendly – Your site must be easy to use and easy to navigate around in. Your service information should not be hard to find. 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 files to your site (e.g. forms and documents), make sure that users are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organization – If your site isn’t cleanly organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective buyers but current clients as well. Having features such as search engine-friendly links, product and service categories and sections where topic-related content can be easily found provides visitors with an enjoyable experience.
• Eye-Catching Features – Users stay longer on websites that are user friendly, well organized, and that are eye-catching and stimulating. This means achieving a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your website users. For example, highlight hyperlinks pointing to product pages with professionally-taken photos or illustrations next to well-written product descriptions. This can be very effective and can help improve not only the user experience on your site, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• Interactive Site – Another thing that helps customers decide to stay longer on your site is to provide interactive features that engage your customers, such as the ability to leave comments, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your staff via a responsive helpdesk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … You also want visitors to navigate quickly around your website and access your data without waiting around for pages to load, so having your site optimized for faster loading pages is important.
• Compliance – One of the most important and often neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make users feel confident interacting with you online. To reassure your prospective buyers that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your site includes legal compliance pages such as a business information page, privacy statement, terms of use, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(Site design issues)

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 designed, you run the risk of not only losing potential paying clients but also your current clients as well.

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

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

If you are currently considering having a new website built or upgrading an existing web site, then we suggest that you consider using WordPress.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We currently provide a lot more in-depth articles about the benefits and advantages of the WordPress platform on this site, but here are just a few things to keep in mind about why you should choose WordPress:

WordPress – Customizable Web Design

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

There are literally thousands of professionally designed themes available that you can download and easily install on your site. Many of these are either free, or are relatively inexpensive, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes nowadays are fully responsive and provide you with flexible and customizable features for changing the design of your site such as the color, template elements like menus and headers, layouts and more. Themes are just one of the many things that make WordPress such a great tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that works for your business.

You can learn about WP themes here:

• WordPress For Newbies – An Introduction To Themes

WordPress – Virtually Unlimited Functionality

Another great reason to choose the WP web site publishing software is that WordPress provides website owners with modular features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

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

Earlier in this article we discussed areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built web site could end up costing you business.

Plugins can help you overcome these problems quite inexpensively. If there is a feature you need to integrate into your site, just install a plugin that will get things done.

Need a plugin that will let you know about any issues detected with your site such as links not working, audios not streaming, images that are missing or even tell you if your whole site has gone down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about issues so you can correct these immediately!

Want a plugin that will let you 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 goods or services online and provide your customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to choose and add products to a cart, enter discounts, buy with credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices and email confirmations, etc.

And just like WordPress themes, there are tens of thousands of great WordPress plugins that can be downloaded at no cost, or that you can purchase for a small price and will save you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WordPress Plugins)

You can learn more about plugins here:

• Adding New Features And Functionality To Your WordPress Blog With Plugins

WordPress – An Enhanced Web User Experience

In addition to being able to address issues caused by a poorly-constructed website, WordPress can also help you provide web users with a great user experience.

WordPress provides beautiful and visually-exciting themes that cover all kinds of applications and feature-rich plugins that allow site users to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress website, WordPress themes, plugins and great content, you can create a very rich and enhanced user experience that will keep them coming back to your website.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers nowadays do extensive research online before they make purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rewarding user experience, consumers will not return and simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website.

Hopefully, this article has given you 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 the benefits of using WordPress for a business website please click on links to visit our related posts section.

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