Are you missing out on customers because of a poorly-designed site? Regardless of how good your products are, a poorly-constructed web site can end up costing you many new customers.

In a world where looks matter, your website’s design can play a significant role in the success of your business. Your website is the first thing that a visitors see and this can influence their decision to purchase.

Think about how you research businesses nowadays. Even if it’s just preliminary research, we will instinctively jump online and go visit someone’s web site before taking the next step.

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

The way your website looks is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can affect your visitors’ perceptions and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Help You Fix Your Poorly-Built Website?

Here are just some of the main design problems that can affect your web site:

Site Design Problems

Common design issues that can affect a visitor’s perception about your website include some or all of the following:

• Color – Poor color combinations can impact on your results. This also applies to using text and background color. There are ways to specify web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to make sure that the palettes you select will display consistently across various mediums. If in doubt, seek the services of a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain visually uninteresting, outdated and just plain old ugly images can easily result in users quickly losing interest in off your website. Visitors can also be affected by subtle inconsistencies in your design elements and overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – How your site is arranged can significantly impact the way users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigational items, links, and other elements are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, content columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – As information is now viewed by a range of devices with different-sized screens and browsers, it’s important that your web design be responsive. If your web pages do not resize automatically to work across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will experience business losses.

Website Functionality Problems

Typical functionality issues include the following:

• Frequent errors – A huge turn-off for users is landing on a site where some hyperlinks don’t work, videos don’t play and images are missing. Subpar functionality is not acceptable, especially when you are trying to come across as a professional. Your website reflects your business. It’s important therefore, to make sure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and images are running smoothly at all times. In some cases, problems are caused by external factors like your web hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to make sure that you’re always proactive and that all problems are addressed as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your business offers visitors certain features, then make sure that these features are not limited. For example, if you plan to sell products online, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add products to a cart, enter discount codes, buy with a credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts, and confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Typically, where your business suffers most noticeably because of a poorly-built web site is in the realm of the “user experience”.

An unpleasant user experience can leave a bad taste in users mouths and lead to venting their frustrations in social networks, forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

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

• User-Friendly – Your website needs to be user-friendly. Information about your products and services should be easy to find. Your visitors 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. forms and documents), make sure that users are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organization – If your site isn’t cleanly organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective customers but also existing customers. Providing features like descriptive links, product and service categories and well-organized sections where related content is grouped or linked together can help provide visitors with a good experience.
• Eye-Catching Web Site – Customers want sites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that are stimulating. This means striving for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your visitors. For example, highlight links pointing to product pages with eye-catching images with well-crafted descriptions. This can be very effective and can help you improve not only the user experience on your website, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• User Interactivity – Another area that helps to improve user experience on your site is to provide interactive features that engage customers, such as allowing them to comment on, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your support staff via a responsive helpdesk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … Additionally, you want visitors to navigate quickly through your website and access your data without waiting around for pages to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Reassuring Site – One of the most important and often ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to make users feel comfortable doing business with you online. To reassure your visitors that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your web site includes legal pages such as a contact page, privacy policy, terms of use, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(Site design issues)

As the above shows, there are many areas that can contribute to a poor user experience and impact your business success online. If your website is poorly constructed, you run the risk of not only losing potential paying customers but also your existing customers as well.

Now … what if you have arrived found this information because you have an existing site with design problems that could be affecting your business?

First, understand that getting issues addressed on an existing website can take time and can be quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you currently own, especially if the work requires a lot of code editing.

If you are in the process of getting a new website developed or redesigning an existing website, then we suggest that you consider using WordPress.

(WordPress can improve your website results!)

We plan to publish more articles about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress on this site, but here are just a few things to keep in mind about why you should use WordPress:

WP Themes – Unique Web Design Features

WP themes are unique website design template systems that let you completely modify the look of your entire website in minutes.

There are thousands of professional WP themes available that can be downloaded. Many themes are either free of charge, or can be purchased relatively cheaply, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WordPress Themes)

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

Learn about themes here:

• WP Themes – An Overview

Plugins – Modular Features

Another compelling reason to build your site using WordPress is that WordPress provides users with powerful features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

Plugins, like WP themes, integrate easily with your site to provide you with almost unlimited expansion.

Earlier we talked about issues in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built web site can end up costing you money.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a functionality that needs to be integrated with your site, just install a plugin that does exactly what you need done.

Need a plugin that will notify you about any issues with your website such as links not working, audios not playing, graphics that aren’t displaying or even tell you if your whole site has gone down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about issues so you can take immediate corrective action!

Need a plugin that will let you turn 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 visitors with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily choose and add items to a shopping cart, use discount codes, buy with credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are thousands of useful plugins that you can download and easily install on your site for free, or are relatively cheap, once again, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WordPress Plugins)

You can learn more about plugins here:

• Using WordPress Plugins To Expand Your Website’s Functionality

WordPress – An Engaging Website User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful and visually-exciting themes that cover all needs and uses and applications and functional plugins that allow web visitors to contact, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-powered website, WordPress themes, plugins and great content, you can create a very rich and enhanced user experience that will keep visitors returning for more.

As stated earlier, consumers nowadays will do extensive research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rewarding user experience, 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 build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress please see other posts we have published on this site.

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