Are you losing business because of poor web design? Regardless of how great the quality of your products may be, a poorly-built web site can end up losing you many new customers.

In a world where beautiful design matters, the look of your website is very important to the success of your business. Your website may be the first thing that a web visitors see and this can affect their decision to purchase.

Think about how most people do research about products nowadays. Even if it’s only preliminary research, we still turn on our smart phone and go visit somebody’s site before deciding what to do next.

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

What prospective clients 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 affect your visitors’ thoughts and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Help You Fix Bad Web Design?

Let’s review some of the more important design issues that can affect your site’s results and performance:

Site Design Problems

Some of the most common web design problems that can impact your prospect’s perception about your website include:

• Color – Clashing color schemes can affect your results. This also applies to text and background color. There are tools that can help you specify web colors correctly and even safe web color tools you can use to ensure that the color schemes you use will display correctly 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• Design Elements – Web pages that contain unpleasant, outdated or just plain ugly images can easily result in users quickly losing interest in away from your site. Visitors can also be affected by design inconsistencies and excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – How your page content is arranged can have an impact impact on the way users navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigational menus, links, and other useful objects.
• Responsiveness – As websites are now viewed using various devices with different-sized browsers, it’s important that the design of your website be responsive. If your website does not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you may lose potential business opportunities.

Functionality Issues

Typical website functionality problems include:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a website where links don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics aren’t showing. Persistent site errors are not acceptable on a website, especially if you are trying to come across as a professional. Your online presence is a reflection of your business. It’s vitally important to make sure that all your links, videos, and images remain up and running at all times. In some cases, problems are caused by things like your web hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to make sure that you’re consistently proactive and that you attend to all problems immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your website provides visitors specific features or functionalities, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you plan to sell products online, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to choose and add items to a shopping cart, apply discounts, complete their transactions using a credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Invariably, where your business suffers most noticeably because of a poorly-constructed website 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 vent their dissatisfaction on social networks, forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

Common issues that can create a poor user experience include the following:

• User-Friendly – Your site must be user-friendly. Your product 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 information to your site (e.g. PDF reports), make sure that users are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organized – If your web site isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential customers but current customers also. Features like descriptive URLs, product and service categories and sections where your content is grouped or linked together can provide users with an enjoyable experience.
• Eye-Catching Web Site – Customers want sites that are easy to use, well organized, and that are stimulating. To achieve this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your visitors. For example, highlight hyperlinks that lead to product pages by inserting eye-catching product pictures beside well-crafted product descriptions. This is effective and can help you improve not just the user experience on your site, but can also lead to more sales and conversions.
• Engaging Site – Another thing that helps customers want to stick around on your website is to provide interactive features that engage your users, 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 … You also want users to navigate quickly within your website and access your information without waiting around for content to load, so site loading optimization is important.
• Reassurance – One of the most important and often ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to make users feel comfortable interacting with you online. To reassure your potential clients that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your website includes legal pages like a business information page, privacy statement, terms and conditions of use, security information, FTC disclaimers, etc.

(Site design problems)

As you can see, there are many areas that can lead to a poor user experience and impact your business success online. If your web site isn’t designed in a user-friendly way, you run the risk of not only losing prospective paying customers but also your current clients as well.

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

First, be aware that getting problems addressed on an existing site can take some time and can be somewhat costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you currently own, especially if what needs doing requires a lot of web code writing.

If you are considering getting a new website developed or upgrading an existing web site, then we suggest that you seriously consider using the WordPress web site management platform.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

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

WP Themes – Flexible Web Design

WordPress themes are unique web design templates that let you completely customize the look of your website in minutes.

There are literally thousands of professional themes available that you can install on your site. Many of these are either free of charge, or are extremely affordable, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WP Themes)

Most WP themes are fully responsive and provide you with flexible and customizable features for changing your site’s design like the color, template elements like menus, headers, footers, page layouts and more. Themes are just part of what makes WordPress such a powerful tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that works for your business.

You can learn about WP themes here:

• WP Themes – An Introduction

WordPress – Virtually Unlimited Scalability

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

Plugins, like themes, integrate easily with your website to provide you with virtually unlimited new functionality.

Earlier in this post we discussed problems in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly constructed web site can end up losing you potential clients.

WP plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a functionality that needs to be added to your site, just install a plugin that gets what you need done.

Want a plugin that will notify you immediately about any problems detected with your site like links not working, videos not streaming, pictures that aren’t showing or even alert you if your entire web site is down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about problems so you can take immediate corrective action!

Need a plugin that will transform 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 users with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add products to a shopping cart, enter discounts, purchase with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally tens of thousands of great plugins that can be easily downloaded for free, or are extremely well priced, once again, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WordPress Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

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

WordPress – A Rich Website 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 customers.

WordPress provides beautiful and exciting themes that cover all types of uses and applications and functional plugins that allow site users to connect, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress site, WP themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a very a highly interactive user experience that will keep users coming back for more.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers nowadays will do research online before they make purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed with customers in mind, they will not return and simply move on to another business with a better website.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you grow your business business online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WordPress CMS software please see other posts we have published on this site.

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