Are you missing out on prospects because of poor web design? Regardless of how great the quality of your products and services may be, a poorly-designed web site can end up losing you valuable business.

In a world where attractive design sells, the way your website looks can be very important to your business success. Your website may be the first thing that your web visitors see and this can influence their purchasing decision.

Think about how most people do research about products nowadays. Even if it’s only just preliminary research, we still jump online and go visit somebody’s web site before taking the next step.

Now, try to see things from your prospect’s point of view. How does your web site appear to them? Does it invite people to approach and explore things further, or does it make people hesitant and unsure about what to do next?

The way your site looks is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can affect your visitors’ perceptions and their decision to ultimately buy from you.

Can WordPress Help Fix Your Poorly-Designed Web Site?

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

Site Design Issues

Common web design issues that can influence your prospect’s perception of your website include some following:

• Color – Poor color combinations affect your site’s results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are ways to pick web colors correctly and even safe web colors to make sure that the palettes you select will display predictably across various systems. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain uninteresting, outdated and just plain ugly graphic elements can easily turn prospects away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic element choices and excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – The way your pages are arranged can impact the way users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigation items, links, and other guiding features like search boxes are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, page columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – Since websites are now viewed through a range of devices with different-sized browsers, it’s important that your web design be fully responsive. If your website does not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will experience business losses.

Web Site Functionality Problems

Some common functionality problems can include some or all of the following:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for users is landing on a website where some links don’t work, videos don’t play and graphics aren’t displaying. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable, especially if your aim is to come across as a professional and reliable company. Your website is a reflection of your business. It’s important therefore, to make sure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and graphics remain running smoothly at all times. In some cases, these issues could be related to external things like your hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to ensure that you’re always proactive and that you get issues corrected as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your site offers users specific features, then make sure that these features are not limited. For example, if you would like to sell goods or services online, make sure that you provide users with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily choose and add products to a shopping cart, use discounts, order with credit cards or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Typically, where your business suffers most noticeably due to a poorly-built site is in the realm of the “user experience”.

A poor user experience can leave a bad taste in users mouths and lead them to share their dissatisfaction on social sites, forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

Some common problems that can lead to a poor user experience include some or all of the following:

• User-Friendly – Your site should be easy to use and easy to navigate. Your product information should be easy to find. Your potential clients 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 content to your site (e.g. videos), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organization – If your site content isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential buyers but also current clients. Having features such as descriptive URLs, product and service categories and well-organized sections where your content is grouped or linked together can provide users with an enjoyable experience.
• Stimulating Website – Customers stay longer on sites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that are eye-catching. To achieve this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling web copy that engages your visitors. For example, draw attention to links pointing to your product pages by inserting great graphics next to well-crafted product descriptions. This is effective and can help you improve not just the user experience on your website, but can also help you get more sales and conversions.
• Interactive Features – Another aspect that helps visitors want to stick around on your site is providing interactive features that engage your customers, like the ability to leave comments, 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 be able to navigate quickly within your website and access your data without waiting around for content to load, so having your site optimized for page loading speed is important.
• Compliance – One of the most important and often most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to ensure that users feel comfortable interacting with you online. To reassure your web visitors that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your site includes legal compliance pages like a business information page, privacy policy, terms and conditions of usage, security information, affiliate disclaimers, etc.

(Website design issues)

As the above shows, there are many areas that can contribute to a poor user experience and impact your business results online. If your web site is poorly built, you run the serious risk of not only losing potential paying customers but also some of current customers as well.

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

First, be aware that getting a website overhaul can take time and can be quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you own, especially if the work requires a lot of web code modification.

If you are considering having a new website built or overhauling an existing web site, then we suggest that you seriously consider building or redesigning your site with the WordPress web site publishing platform.

(WordPress can help to improve your website results!)

We currently provide more in-depth articles about WordPress on this site, but here are just some things to keep in mind about why you should seriously consider using WordPress:

WordPress – Flexible Website Design

WP themes are unique web design templates that enable you to instantly modify the look of your website in minutes.

There are thousands of professional looking themes for WordPress available that you can install on your website. Many of these are either free, or they are relatively cheap to purchase, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes created for WordPress nowadays are fully responsive and provide website owners with flexible and customizable options for changing your website’s design settings like color, elements like menus, headers, footers, layouts and more. Themes are just part of what makes WordPress an ideal tool for helping you create a design for your website that ultimately helps to improve your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• WP For Newbies – An Introduction To WP Themes

WP Plugins – Modular Functionality

Another great reason to choose the WordPress web site publishing platform is that WordPress gives users almost unlimited functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

Plugins, like themes, integrate with your website to provide you with virtually unlimited scalability.

Earlier in this article we looked at areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly designed web site could cost you customers.

WP plugins can help you overcome these issues quite inexpensively. If there is a feature that needs to be integrated into your site, just install a plugin that does what you need to get things done.

Need a plugin that will notify you about any issues on your site like links not working, videos not streaming, images that aren’t displaying or even alert you if your entire website is down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about issues so you can take immediate corrective action!

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 on your site and provide your visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add items to a cart, use discount codes, order using credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and confirmations, etc.

And just like WordPress themes, there are tens of thousands of great plugins that can be easily downloaded at no cost, or are extremely affordable and will save you thousands of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WordPress Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

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

WordPress – An Immediate Website User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful and visually-exciting themes that cover all kinds of uses and applications and functional plugins that allow customers to contact, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-driven site, WordPress themes, plugins and great content, you can create a a highly interactive user experience that will keep users returning to your website.

As stated earlier, consumers do extensive research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rewarding user experience, these consumers will not return and simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website and website experience.

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

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