Are you losing customers because of a poorly-constructed web site? A poorly-built website could cost you potential new customers and cause more issues than you could ever wish for.

In a world where the way we project ourselves matter, the look of your web site can affect the success of your business. Your website is probably the first thing that a prospective client sees and this could affect their purchasing decision.

We do it mostly online. Even if it’s only just preliminary research, we will fire up our laptop and go browse someone’s web site before making our next move.

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

What your web visitors 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 web visitors’ thoughts and their decision to buy from you.

Can WordPress Fix Bad Web Design?

Here are just some key design issues that can affect your web site’s results and performance:

Web Design Issues

Some common web design problems that can affect a potential customer’s perception of your website include:

• Color – Clashing color combinations affect your website’s results. This also applies to your choice of text and background color. There are methods that can help you choose web colors correctly and even safe web color palettes you can use to ensure that the colors you choose will display consistently across different mediums. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain boring, outdated and just plain ugly images can result in users quickly losing interest in away from your site. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic element choices or excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you lay out your content can have a significant impact on how users navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigational menus, links, and other useful orientation elements like search boxes are used, where menus are positioned on your site, content columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – Since websites are now accessed using various devices with different-sized browsers, it’s vitally important that the design of your website be fully responsive. If your website does not display well across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you could lose valuable opportunities.

Website Functionality Problems

Typical functionality problems include the following:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a website where hyperlinks don’t work, videos can’t play and images are missing. Frequent site errors are not acceptable in a website, especially when your aim is to come across as a professional and reliable business. Your web presence is a reflection of your business. It’s important therefore, to make sure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and images remain up and running all the time. In some cases, these issues could be caused by things like your hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to make sure that remain proactive and that all issues get corrected as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your business offers users certain functionalities, then make sure that these functionalities are not limited. For example, if you plan to sell goods or services on your site, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily choose and add items to a cart, apply coupons, purchase using credit cards or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Normally, where your business suffers most noticeably because of a poorly-designed website is the “user experience”.

A bad user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead them to share their frustrations across social sites, forums, review sites, comments, etc., bringing you unwanted negative attention.

Here are some of the more common issues 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 hard to find. Your site visitors 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. spreadsheets), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organization – If your web site isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential buyers but also current clients. Having features like descriptive links, product and service categories and sections where topic-related content can be easily found provides visitors with an enjoyable experience.
• Stimulating Features – Users stick around on sites that are user friendly, well organized, and that are eye-catching. To achieve this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your visitors. For example, highlight hyperlinks that point to your product pages by inserting beautiful graphics and well-written descriptions. This can be very effective and will help improve not just the user experience on your website, but can also lead to more sales and conversions.
• User Engagement Features – Another thing that helps visitors decide to stick around on your site is providing interactive features that engage customers, such as 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 navigate quickly through your website and access your information without waiting around for pages to load, so having your site optimized for faster loading pages is important.
• Reassuring Website – One of the most important and often neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that users feel confident interacting with you online. To reassure your web visitors that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal compliance pages such as a contact page, privacy policy, terms of use, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(Web design issues)

As the above shows, there are many areas that can lead to a poor user experience and impact your business success online. If your website isn’t designed in a user-friendly way, you run the risk of not only losing prospective clients but also your current clients too.

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

First, understand that getting problems corrected on an existing website can take some time and can also be quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you currently own, especially if it requires rewriting web code extensively.

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

(WordPress can improve your website results!)

We currently share more posts about the benefits and advantages of WordPress on this site, but here are just a few key points to keep in mind about why you should seriously choose WordPress:

WP Themes – Unique Website Design Features

WP themes are unique web design template systems that let you quickly modify the look of your entire website without touching the site’s content or changing the underlying site functionality.

There are thousands of great-looking themes available that you can install on your site. Many themes are either free, or they are relatively inexpensive, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes are fully responsive and provide website owners with customizable options for changing your site’s design settings like color, template elements like headers, footers, menus and styles, page layouts and more. This is just one of the many things that make WordPress an ideal tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that helps your business.

You can learn about WP themes here:

• WP Themes – An Introduction

WordPress Plugins – Powerful Functionality

Another great reason to build your site using the WP web site publishing software is that WordPress provides you with powerful functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

WordPress plugins, like WP themes, integrate with your site to provide you with virtually unlimited new features.

Earlier we discussed areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built website could cost you customers.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite easily. If there is a feature you would like to integrate into your site, just install a WordPress plugin that will do what you want your site to do.

Need a plugin that will notify you about any issues with your website such as hyperlinks not working, videos not streaming, pictures that aren’t showing or even tell you if your entire site is down? No problems … there are WordPress plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about issues so you can correct these immediately!

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 plugins that will help you sell products online and provide your visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to choose and add products to a shopping cart, enter coupons, order with credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices and email confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally thousands of fantastic plugins for WordPress site owners that you can install on your website free of charge, or you can buy for a small price, once again, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WP Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• Using WP Plugins To Expand Your Web Site’s Features

WordPress – An Immediate User Experience

In addition to being able to address problems caused by a poorly-constructed web site, WordPress can also help you give your site users a great user experience.

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and exciting themes that cover all needs and uses and functional plugins that allow customers to contact, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-powered site, WordPress themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a very a highly interactive and engaging user experience that will keep people coming back for more.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers will do extensive research online before making purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed with a focus on the customer, they will not return and simply move on to another business that does provide them 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 get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website please see our related posts section.

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