Are you missing out on business because of poor web design? Regardless of how great the quality of your products may be, a poorly-constructed web site can cost you potential buyers and cause more turmoil than you can imagine.

In a world where attractive design sells, the way your web site looks can play a significant role in the success of your business. Your website is probably the first thing that a visitor sees and this could influence their purchasing decision.

We typically do it mostly online. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we will switch to our mobile phone and go browse a website first before purchasing products in-store or online.

Now, try to see things from your visitor’s perspective. How does your web site appear to other people? Does your site invite people to draw closer and explore things further, or does it make people 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 only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can affect your visitors’ perceptions and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Fix Your Poorly-Designed Website?

Let’s review some of the more important design problems that can affect your site:

Web Design Problems

Typical web design issues that can affect a user’s perception about your website include:

• Color – Poor color schemes can impact on your results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are methods to select web colors correctly and even safe web colors to help make sure that the colors you want to use will display predictably across various devices. If in doubt, seek the services of a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain boring, outdated and just plain old ugly graphics can easily turn prospects off your website. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic element choices and excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you structure your content can impact how users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigational menus, links, and other elements are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, page columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – Since websites are now viewed by various devices with different-sized screens and browsers, it’s vitally important that your web design be fully responsive. If your web pages do not resize automatically to fit your content across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you could lose valuable customers.

Web Site Functionality Problems

Common functionality issues may include some following:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is arriving on a website where hyperlinks don’t work, videos don’t play and images are missing. Frequent site errors are not acceptable for a website, especially if you are trying to come across professionally. Your website is a reflection of your organization. It’s important to make sure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and images remain running smoothly all the time. Sometimes, these problems are caused by factors such as your web hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to ensure that you’re consistently proactive and that all issues are corrected immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your business offers visitors specific features and functionalities, then make sure that these 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 select and add items to a cart, enter discount codes, pay using a credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Typically, the area that most suffers due to a poorly-built site is the “user experience”.

Anything less than a great user experience can leave a bad taste in users mouths and lead them to share their frustrations across social sites, forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

Here are some common problems that can create a poor user experience:

• Ease Of Use – Your website must be easy to use and easy to navigate around in. Your service information should not be kept in obscure corners. Your customers want user-friendly features and they want to find what they are looking for quickly and without disappointment. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable files to your site (e.g. forms and documents), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organization – If your site content isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential customers but current clients as well. Things such as search engine-friendly URLs, product and service categories and sections where topic-related content is grouped or linked together can help provide visitors with an enjoyable user experience.
• Compelling Features – Visitors stay longer on sites that are easy to use, well organized, and that provide them with eye-catching options. To achieve this you need to strive for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your website users. For example, draw attention to hyperlinks pointing to product pages by inserting great images alongside well-written product descriptions. This is very effective and will help improve not only the user experience on your website, but can also help you get more sales and conversions.
• Interactive Features – Another thing that helps to improve user experience on your site is to provide interactive features that engage customers, such as the ability to leave comments, 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 … Additionally, you want visitors to be able to navigate quickly around your site and access your information without waiting around for content to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Reassurance – One of the most important and often ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to ensure that users feel confident interacting with you online. To reassure your prospective customers that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your website includes legal pages such as a business contact page, privacy statement, terms and conditions of usage, security information, affiliate disclaimers, etc.

(Web site design issues)

As the above shows, there are many areas that can contribute to a poor user experience and negatively impact your business results online. If your site isn’t designed in a user-friendly way, you run the risk of not only losing potential customers but also some of current customers too.

Now … what if you have arrived on our website because you currently have an existing website with design problems that could be affecting your business?

First, be aware that getting a complete website overhaul can take some time and can be fairly costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you operate, especially if what needs doing requires a lot of code editing.

If you are considering getting a new website developed or overhauling an existing site, then we suggest that you consider building or redesigning your site with WordPress.

(WordPress can help you improve your website results!)

We plan to provide a lot more information about the benefits and advantages of the WordPress platform on this site, but here are just a few key points to keep in mind about why you should seriously consider using WordPress:

WP Themes – Unique Website Design Features

WP themes are unique web design templates that allow you to quickly change the look and feel of your entire site in minutes.

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

(WP Themes)

Most WP themes nowadays are fully responsive and provide site owners with flexible and customizable features for changing your website’s design settings like the color, elements like menus and headers, page layouts and more. Themes are just one of the many things that make WordPress such a powerful tool for helping you create a design for your website that helps your business.

Learn about themes here:

• WordPress For Beginners – An Overview Of Themes

Plugins – Modular Features

Another great reason to choose the WP content management software is that WordPress gives you powerful features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

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

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

Plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite inexpensively. If there is a feature you need to integrate into your site, just install a WordPress plugin that does what you want done.

Need a plugin that will let you know about any problems detected with your site like hyperlinks not working, videos not streaming, pictures that aren’t showing or even alert you if your whole web 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 transform your site into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce solution? Again, no problem! There are several plugins that will help you sell products online and provide your users with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add items to a cart, enter discounts, pay with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and email confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally tens of thousands of fantastic WordPress plugins that you can install on your site at no cost, or that can be bought relatively cheaply and will save you thousands of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WordPress Plugins)

You can learn more about WP plugins here:

• WordPress Plugins – Enhancing Your Blog’s Functionality

WordPress – An Enhanced User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful and exciting themes that cover all kinds of uses and applications and functional plugins that allow customers to contact, engage and interact 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 and engaging user experience that will keep users coming back again and again.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers nowadays will do extensive research online before making purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed with customers in mind, consumers will simply move on to another business that does provide them with a better website and user experience.

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

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