Can WordPress Fix Poor Web Design?

This tutorial explains some of the issues and problems caused by having a poorly-designed website and how WordPress can help fix poor web design.

WordPressAre you losing prospects because of poor web design? No matter how great the quality of your services may be, a poorly-built website can end up costing you many new customers.

In a world where the way we project ourselves matter, your website’s design can contribute significantly to the success of your business. Your website is probably the first thing that a web visitor sees and this could influence their decision to purchase from you.

We do it mostly online. Even if it’s just preliminary research, we may switch on our mobile phone and go visit a website before deciding what to do next.

Now, try to see things from your prospect’s point of view. How does your web site appear to them? Does your site invite them to draw closer and explore things further, or does it make them confused and cautious 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 are so many other factors than can influence your visitors’ perceptions and their decision to ultimately move forward with you.

Can WordPress Fix Bad Web Design?

Let’s take a look at some key design issues that can affect your web site’s results:

Website Design Problems

Typical design problems that can influence your potential customer’s perception about your site include some following:

  • Color – Unattractive color combinations affect your results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are tools that can help you pick web colors correctly and even safe web color tools you can use to ensure that the palettes you decide on will display correctly across various devices. If in doubt, consult a web design professional.
  • Design Elements – Web pages that contain unpleasant, outdated and just plain old hard to read text can easily turn prospective clients off your site.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 page content can impact the way users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigation menus, links, and other useful objects.
  • Responsiveness – Since websites are now accessed using a range of devices with different-sized screens and browsers, it’s 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 experience significant business opportunity losses.

Site Functionality Issues

Typical website functionality problems include:

  • Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is arriving on a site where some hyperlinks don’t work, videos don’t play and images aren’t displaying. Persistent site errors are no longer acceptable on a website, especially when you are trying to come across as a professional and dependable business. Your website is a reflection of your company. It’s vitally important to ensure that all your links, videos, and images remain running smoothly at all times. Sometimes, problems could be caused by external things such as your web hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to ensure that you’re always proactive and that you attend to problems as soon as possible.
  • Feature limitations – If your website offers users specific functionalities, then make sure that these functionalities are not limited. For example, if you intend to sell products on your site, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add items to a shopping cart, use discounts, order with a credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Typically, where your business suffers most noticeably due to a poorly-built website is the “user experience”.

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

Some of the most common issues that can lead to a poor user experience include:

  • Ease Of Use – Your website needs to be user-friendly. Your product information should be easy to locate. 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 content to your site (e.g. videos), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
  • Organized – If your site content isn’t cleanly organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective clients but current customers as well. Features such as descriptive links, product and service categories and well-organized sections where your content can be easily found can provide users with an enjoyable experience.
  • Stimulating Site – Users stick around on websites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that provide them with eye-catching options. To accomplish this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your website users. For example, highlight links which lead to product pages with professionally-taken images and well-crafted descriptions. This can be very effective and will help you improve not just the user experience on your website, but can also help you generate more sales and conversions.
  • Engaging Site – Another aspect that helps visitors want to stay longer on your website is providing interactive features that engage your visitors, like allowing them to 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 … You also want users to browse quickly within your site and access your data without waiting around for content to load, so having your site optimized for faster loading pages is important.
  • Reassurance – One of the most important and often ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that 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 pages such as a business contact page, privacy statement, terms of use, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

Website design problems

(Website design problems)

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

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

First, keep in mind that getting a complete website overhaul can take some time and can also be somewhat costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you have, especially if the work requires a lot of code writing.

If you are currently in the process of getting a new website built or upgrading an existing website, then we suggest that you consider building or redesigning your site with WordPress.

WordPress can help improve your website results!

(WordPress can help to improve your website results!)

We plan to share a lot more in-depth posts 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 seriously choose WordPress:

WordPress – Inexpensive Website Design

WordPress themes are unique web site design templates that let you immediately customize the look of your website in minutes.

There are thousands of great-looking WP themes available that you can install on your website. Many of these are either free, or can be purchased for a relatively small cost, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

WordPress Themes

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes are fully responsive and provide you with highly customizable features for changing your site’s design such as color, elements like menus and headers, page layouts and more. This is just one of the many things that make WordPress such a powerful tool for helping you create a design for your website that ultimately helps your business.

You can learn about WP themes here:

WP Plugins – Virtually Unlimited Features

Another compelling reason to choose the WordPress CMS is that WordPress gives website owners powerful features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

Plugins, like themes, integrate with your site to provide you with virtually unlimited new features.

Earlier in this article we discussed issues in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly designed website can end up losing you business.

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

Need a plugin that will notify you immediately about any issues detected with your site like links not working, videos not streaming, images that are missing or even tell you if your entire web site is down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about problems so you can take immediate corrective action!

Want a plugin that will let you turn your website into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce 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 functionality that allow them to easily select and add products to a shopping cart, enter discount coupons, pay with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and confirmations, etc.

And just like WordPress themes, there are literally tens of thousands of useful plugins that can be easily downloaded and are freely available, or can be purchased quite cheaply, once again, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web development.

WP Plugins

(WordPress Plugins)

You can learn more about WordPress plugins here:

WordPress – An Immediate Web User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful and exciting themes that cover all needs and uses and functional plugins that allow customers to connect, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress site, WordPress themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a very rich user experience that will keep them coming back to your website.

WP website design

As we’ve previously stated, consumers do research online before making purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed with the customer in mind, they will not return and simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.

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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)

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