Are you losing customers because of poor web design? A poorly-constructed web site could lose you valuable business.

In a world where beautiful design sells, the way your website looks is very important to the success of your business. Your website is probably the first thing that a visitors see and this could influence their purchasing decision.

Think about how you do research about products and services nowadays. Even if it’s only just preliminary research, we will jump online and go visit a web site first before buying goods in-store or online.

Now, try to see things from your customer’s viewpoint. How does your website appear to visitors? Does it invite people to come and explore things further, or does it make people hesitant and unsure about what to do next?

What your visitors see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see on your screen) is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other factors than can affect your web visitors’ experience and their decision to ultimately purchase from you.

Can WordPress Fix Your Poorly-Constructed Website?

Here are just a few key design problems that can affect your web site’s results:

Web Design Problems

Common design issues that can affect your user’s perception of your website include:

• Color – Bad color schemes affect 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 you can use to ensure that the palettes you decide on will display consistently across various devices. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically uninteresting, outdated and just plain ugly visual elements can turn visitors off your site. Visitors can also be affected by design inconsistencies or overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – How your site is laid out can significantly impact how users navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational menus, links, and other elements are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, page columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – As information is now viewed using various devices with different-sized screens, it’s vitally important that your web design be responsive. If your website does not resize automatically to work on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you may incur loss of customers.

Functionality Issues

Some of the most common functionality issues may include:

• Too many site errors – A huge turn-off for users is landing on a website where some links don’t work, videos don’t play and graphics aren’t displaying. Persistent site errors are no longer acceptable, especially when your aim is to come across as a professional. Your website is a reflection of your organization. It’s vitally important therefore, to ensure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and images are up and running at all times. In some cases, problems are caused by things like your web hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to ensure that you’re always proactive and that all issues get repaired as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your web site provides users certain features, then make sure that these features are not limited. For example, if you plan to sell goods or services online, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add products to a shopping cart, apply discounts, complete their transactions with a credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts, and confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

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

A disappointing user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead to sharing their dissatisfaction on social sites, user forums, review sites, commenting sections, etc., bringing you negative attention.

Common issues that can cause a bad user experience include:

• Ease Of Use – Your website needs to be user-friendly. Information about your products and services should not be hard to find. 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 information to your site (e.g. PDF forms and documents), make sure that users are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organized – If your web site isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective buyers but also current clients. Having features such as descriptive links, product and service categories and sections where topic-related content is grouped or linked together can help provide users with a good experience.
• Compelling Website – Customers want websites that are user friendly, well organized, and that are eye-catching and stimulating. To accomplish this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your users. For example, draw attention to hyperlinks pointing to your product pages by inserting great graphics and well-written descriptions. This can be very effective and can help you improve not just the user experience on your website, but can also help you get more sales and conversions.
• User Interactivity – Another area that helps to improve user experience on your site is providing interactive features that engage your visitors, like features that let them\visitors comment on, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your 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 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.
• Compliance – One of the most important and often most ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to make users feel comfortable interacting with you online. To reassure your visitors that your business is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal pages such as a business information page, privacy statement, terms of usage, security information, earnings disclaimers, etc.

(Web site design issues)

As you can see, there are many areas that can lead to a poor user experience and impact your business results online. If your web site is poorly designed, you run the serious risk of not only losing potential paying clients but also your current customers too.

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

First, keep in mind that getting problems addressed on an existing website can take some time and can end up being quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you operate, especially if it requires modifying web code extensively.

If you are currently considering getting a new website developed or upgrading an existing web site, then we suggest that you seriously consider choosing WordPress.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We plan to share more in-depth posts about WordPress on this site, but here are just a few key points to keep in mind about why you should seriously consider using WordPress:

WordPress – Customizable Web Design

WP themes are unique web design template systems that allow you to completely change the look of your entire website in minutes.

There are literally thousands of professional looking themes created for WordPress available that you can install on your site. Many themes are either free of charge, or are relatively cheap to buy, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes for WordPress are responsive and provide users with flexible and customizable options for changing your site’s design such as color, template elements like headers and footers, 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 ultimately works for your business.

You can learn about WP themes here:

• WordPress For Newbies – An Overview Of Themes

WordPress – Virtually Unlimited Features

Another great reason to choose WordPress is that WordPress provides website owners with scalable features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

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

Earlier we discussed areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly constructed website can lose you customers.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues quite inexpensively. If there is a feature you want integrated into your site, just install a plugin that will get things done.

Want a plugin that will notify you about any issues detected with your website such as links not working, audios not streaming, pictures that aren’t displaying or even tell you if your entire site has gone down? No problems … there are WP plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about problems so you can take immediate corrective action!

Need a plugin that will transform your website into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce system? Again, no problem! There are several plugins that will help you sell goods or services on your site and provide your users with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily choose and add items to a shopping cart, apply discount coupons, purchase with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts and email confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are tens of thousands of great WP plugins that you can install on your site at no cost, or are extremely well priced, once again, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WordPress Plugins)

Learn more about WordPress plugins here:

• Using WordPress Plugins To Enhance Your Website’s Features

WordPress – An Engaging Web User Experience

In addition to being able to address issues caused by a poorly-designed website, WordPress can also help you create a great user experience for your site users.

WordPress provides beautiful and exciting themes that cover all kinds of uses and feature-rich plugins that allow web users to contact, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-driven site, WordPress themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a rich and immediate user experience that will keep people returning to your site.

As stated earlier, consumers nowadays will do extensive research online before making purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed with the customer in mind, these consumers will simply move on to another business that does provide them with a better website.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you grow your business business online. To learn more about using the WordPress web site management software please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.

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