Are you missing out on customers because of poor web design? Regardless of how professional your company is, a poorly-built website can end up losing you many new customers.

In a world where beautiful design sells, the design of your website is very important to your business success. Your website is probably the first thing that your visitor sees and this could influence their decision to do business with you.

Think about how most people do research about services nowadays. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we will fire up our laptop and go browse somebody’s web site first before purchasing something in-store or online.

Now, try to see things from your prospect’s point of view. How does your web site appear to others? Does it invite people to come and explore things further, or does it make people confused and cautious about where to go next?

How your website looks is only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can influence your visitors’ experience and their decision to engage with you.

Can WordPress Fix A Poorly-Designed Website?

Let’s review some key design problems that can affect your web site:

Website Design Problems

Some common web design problems that can influence your prospect’s perception about your site include:

• Color – Bad color schemes can impact on your website’s results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are ways to select web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to help ensure that the colors you decide on will display predictably across various mediums. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain visually unattractive, outdated and just plain old hard to read typefaces can result in users quickly losing interest in away from your site. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic element choices and overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – How you lay out your content can significantly impact the way visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational menus, links, and other useful guiding elements such as search boxes are used, where menus are positioned on your site, content columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – As websites are now viewed by a range of 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 on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will lose potential business opportunities.

Functionality Problems

Typical functionality problems include:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a website where hyperlinks don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics aren’t showing. Subpar functionality is not acceptable for any website, especially when you are trying to come across as a professional. Your website is a reflection of your company. It’s vitally important therefore, to make sure that all your links, videos, and graphics remain working at all times. In some cases, problems may be caused by things such as your hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to make sure that remain proactive and that you get problems corrected immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your site offers visitors certain features, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you plan to sell products on your site, make sure that you provide users with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to choose and add products to a cart, use coupons, complete purchases using a credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Normally, where customers suffer most due to a poorly-designed web site is the “user experience”.

A bad user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead them to share their disappointment in social networks, user forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

Here are just some of the more common issues that can create a poor user experience:

• User-Friendly – Your site must be easy to use and effortless to navigate around in. Your product information should not be kept in obscure corners. Your customers want user-friendly features and they want to find what they are looking for as quickly and as effortlessly as possible. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable files to your site (e.g. PDF forms and documents), make sure that visitors 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 customers but current clients also. Things such as search engine-friendly links, product and service categories and well-organized areas where topic-related content can be easily found can help provide visitors with a good user experience.
• Compelling Website – Customers stick around on sites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that provide them with stimulating options. This means striking a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling web copy that engages your website users. For example, draw attention to hyperlinks which point to your product pages with eye-catching product pictures and well-written product descriptions. This is effective and can help improve not just the user experience on your website, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• User Interactivity – Another aspect that helps to improve user experience on your website is providing interactive features that engage customers, such as features that let them\visitors comment on, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your staff via a responsive helpdesk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … You also want users to be able to navigate quickly through your site and access your information without waiting around for pages to load, so having your site optimized for faster loading pages is important.
• Trustworthy Site – One of the most important and often ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to make users feel confident interacting with you online. To reassure your visitors that your business is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your web site includes legal compliance pages like a business information page, privacy statement, terms of use, security information, FTC disclaimers, etc.

(Site design problems)

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 constructed, you run the serious risk of not only losing prospective customers but also your current clients as well.

Now … what if you have arrived found this information because you currently have an existing website with design problems that you feel are affecting your business?

First, keep in mind 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 have, especially if what needs doing requires modifying code.

If you are researching the process of having a new website built or redesigning an existing web site, then we suggest that you consider choosing WordPress.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We currently share more articles about the benefits and advantages of the WordPress platform on this site, but here are just a few of the things to keep in mind about why you should consider WordPress:

WordPress Themes – Instant Website Design

WordPress themes are unique website design template systems that let you quickly change the look of your entire site without affecting the website’s content and changing the underlying software functionality.

There are thousands of professional themes available that you can install on your website. Many of these are either freely available, or they are extremely well priced, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WP Themes)

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

You can learn about themes here:

• WP Themes – An Introduction

WP Plugins – Powerful Expansion

Another great reason to build your site using the WordPress web site publishing platform is that WordPress provides you with expandable features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

WordPress plugins, like themes, integrate with your website to provide you with almost unlimited features.

Earlier we talked about issues like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built website can end up costing you customers.

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

Need a plugin that will let you know about any problems with your website like hyperlinks not working, videos not streaming, pictures that aren’t displaying or even tell you if your whole web 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!

Want 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 WordPress plugins that will help you sell products on your site and provide your users with full e-commerce features that allow them to choose and add products to a cart, enter coupons, pay using credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and email confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are tens of thousands of great plugins built for WordPress that can be downloaded at no cost, or that can be bought quite inexpensively, once again, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WP Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• WordPress Plugins – Enhancing Your Web Site’s Features

WordPress – An Enhanced User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful and visually-exciting themes that cover all needs and uses and applications and plugins that allow web users to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress website, WordPress themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a very a highly interactive and engaging user experience that will keep them returning again and again.

As stated earlier, consumers do extensive research online before they make purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed with a focus on the customer, consumers will simply move on to another business with 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 build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WP platform please see other posts we have published on this site.

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