Are you losing prospects because of a poorly-built site? A poorly-constructed website could end up costing you many new customers.

In a world where attractive design matters, the design of your website can contribute significantly to the success of your business. Your website may be the first thing that a web visitor sees and this can influence their decision to purchase from you.

We do it mostly online. Even if it’s only doing preliminary research, we still jump online and go browse a website before making our next move.

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

The way your website looks is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other things than can affect your web visitors’ experience and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Fix Poor Web Design?

Let’s review some of the main design issues that can affect your website:

Web Site Design Problems

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

• Color – Bad color combinations can affect your website’s results. This also applies to using text and background color. There are tools to specify web colors correctly and even safe web color palettes to help make sure that the colors you choose will display correctly across different web formats. If in doubt, consult a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain visually boring, outdated and just plain old ugly graphic elements can easily result in users quickly losing interest in off your site. Visitors can also be affected by subtle inconsistencies in the design elements and excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – How you lay out your pages can significantly impact the way visitors navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other assistive features such as search boxes are used, where menus are positioned on your site, content columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – Since websites are now accessed by a range of devices with different-sized screens and browsers, it’s vitally important that your web design be responsive. If your web pages do not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you could incur loss of customers.

Functionality Problems

Typical website functionality problems include the following:

• Frequent website errors – A huge turn-off for visitors is arriving on a site where some links don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics are missing. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable, especially when you are trying to come across as a professional and reliable company. Your digital presence reflects your company. It’s important therefore, to ensure that all your links, videos, and graphics are up and running all the time. In some cases, these issues could be caused by factors like your 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 as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your business offers users specific functionality, then make sure that these features are not limited. For example, if you intend to sell goods or services on your site, make sure that you provide users with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add products to a cart, use coupons, complete purchases with a credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Normally, 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 visitors’ mouths and lead them to vent their frustrations on social sites, forums, review sites, commenting sections, etc., bringing you unwanted negative publicity.

Some common issues that can cause a poor user experience include the following:

• Ease Of Use – Your website should be easy to use and effortless to navigate. Your service information should not be hard to find. Your customers want user-friendly features and they want to find things quickly and without disappointment. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable information to your site (e.g. spreadsheets), make sure that users are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organization – If your website isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective buyers but existing clients too. Having features like descriptive URLs, product and service categories and sections where your content is grouped or linked together provides users with a good user experience.
• Compelling Features – Users want sites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that provide them with eye-catching options. This requires striving for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your website users. For example, highlight links that direct users to product pages by inserting beautiful photos or illustrations with well-crafted product descriptions. This is very effective and will help you improve not just the user experience on your site, but can also help you get more sales and conversions.
• Interactive Features – Another area that helps visitors want to stick around on your website is to provide interactive features that engage visitors, like the ability to 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 visitors to be able to navigate quickly around your website and access your data without waiting around for pages to load, so site loading optimization is important.
• Trustworthy Site – One of the most important and often most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to ensure that users feel confident interacting with you online. To reassure your visitors that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal pages such as a contact page, privacy statement, terms and conditions of usage, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(Website design issues)

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

Now … what if you have arrived on our site because you currently have an existing site with design issues that you feel may be affecting your business?

First, understand that getting issues corrected on an existing site can take time and can be fairly costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you currently operate, especially if the work requires a lot of web coding.

If you are currently considering getting a new website built or overhauling an existing site, then we highly recommend that you consider using the WordPress website publishing platform.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We plan to provide a lot more in-depth posts about WordPress on this site, but here are just a few things to keep in mind about why you should choose WordPress:

WordPress – Customizable Web Site Design

WP themes are unique website design template systems that let you instantly customize the look and feel of your website with just a few mouse clicks.

There are literally thousands of professional themes created for WordPress site owners available that you can install on your site. Many of these are either freely available, or they are relatively inexpensive, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes created for WordPress are responsive and provide users with customizable options for changing the design of your website such as color, elements like menus and headers, layouts and more. Themes are just part of what makes WordPress an ideal tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that helps to improve your business.

Learn about WordPress themes here:

• WP For Beginners – An Overview Of Themes

WordPress Plugins – Virtually Unlimited Scalability

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

WordPress plugins, like themes, integrate easily with your site to provide you with almost unlimited extra functionality.

Earlier we looked at issues in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built website can end up losing you business.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a feature you need integrated into your site, just install a WP plugin that will do exactly what you need your site to do.

Need a plugin that will let you know about any issues with your site like links not working, audios not streaming, images that are missing or even tell you if your entire site has gone down? No problems … there are WordPress 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 site into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce business solution? Again, no problem! There are several WordPress plugins that will help you sell goods or services online and provide your users with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to select and add items to a cart, enter discounts, order using credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts and email confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are tens of thousands of great plugins that can be easily downloaded free of charge, or that are relatively inexpensive and will save you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WordPress Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• WP Plugins Expand Your Web Site’s Features And Functionality

WordPress – An Interactive 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 customers.

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and visually-exciting themes that cover all kinds of uses and functional plugins that allow customers to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress website, WP themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a rich and enhanced user experience that will keep them returning for more.

As stated earlier, consumers nowadays will do research online before they make purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed with a focus on the customer, these consumers will not return and simply move on to another business that does provide them with a better website.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you improve your business business online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress please click on links to visit our related posts section.

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