Are you missing out on prospects because of a poorly-constructed site? Regardless of how professional your company is, a poorly-built web site could cost you potential customers and cause more havoc than you can handle.

In a world where looks matter, the way your web site looks can affect the success of your business. Your website is the first thing that your web visitors see and this can influence their purchasing decision.

Think about how most people do research about products and services nowadays. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we may switch to our smart phone and go browse someone’s web site first before buying products in-store or online.

Now, put yourself in your visitor’s position. How does your web site appear to online users? Does your site invite them to enter and explore things further, or does it make them confused and cautious about where to go next?

What your prospects see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see in your screen) is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other factors than can influence your visitors’ perceptions and their decision to buy from you.

Can WordPress Fix Bad Web Design?

Let’s review some key design issues that can affect your web site’s results and performance:

Web Site Design Problems

Common design problems that can impact your potential customer’s perception of your website include the following:

• Color – Clashing color schemes can impact on your website’s results. This also applies to using text and background color. There are tools to select web colors correctly and even safe web colors to help make sure that the colors you choose will display predictably across various web formats. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain visually unexciting, outdated and just plain old hard to read typefaces can easily result in users quickly losing interest in away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by design inconsistencies or overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – How you structure your content can impact the way visitors navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigation menus, links, and other elements are used, where menus are positioned on your site, page columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – Since digital information is now viewed through a range of devices with different-sized screens, it’s important that the design of your website be fully responsive. If your web pages do not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will lose business opportunities.

Website Functionality Issues

Common website functionality problems can include some following:

• Persistent website errors – A huge turn-off for users is arriving 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 for a website, especially when your aim is to come across as a professional and reliable business. Your online presence is a reflection of your organization. It’s vitally important to make sure that all your links, videos, and graphics are running smoothly all the time. Sometimes, these issues may be caused by things like your hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to ensure that you’re always proactive and that you attend to all problems immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your web site provides users specific functionalities, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you want to sell products on your site, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily choose and add items to a shopping cart, apply coupons, order using credit cards or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

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

A disappointing user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead to sharing their frustrations on social networks, user forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

Common problems that can cause a poor user experience include the following:

• User-Friendly – Your site should be user-friendly. Information about your products and services should not be hard to find. Your site visitors want user-friendly features and they want to find what they are looking for quickly and with minimal hassle. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable content to your site (e.g. PDF forms and documents), make sure that users are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organized – If your web site isn’t well organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective customers but current customers too. Providing features like descriptive URLs, product and service categories and clearly-defined areas where topic-related content is grouped or linked together provides visitors with an enjoyable user experience.
• Stimulating Web Site – Users stick around on websites that are user friendly, well organized, and that provide them with eye-catching options. To achieve this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your visitors. For example, highlight links that point to your product pages with great product pictures and well-written descriptions. This is effective and will help improve not just the user experience on your site, but can also lead to more sales and conversions.
• User Engagement Features – Another aspect that helps customers decide to stay longer on your website is providing interactive features that engage your customers, like allowing them to leave comments, 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 visitors to browse quickly within your website and access your information without waiting around for pages to load, so site speed optimization 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 comfortable doing business with you online. To reassure your potential clients that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal compliance pages like a contact page, privacy policy, terms and conditions of usage, security information, FTC disclaimers, etc.

(Site design issues)

As you can see, there are many areas that can contribute to a poor user experience and impact your business success online. If your web site is poorly built, you run the serious risk of not only losing potential customers but also your existing customers too.

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

First, understand that getting a complete website overhaul can take some time and can also end up being fairly costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you currently have, especially if it requires modifying web code extensively.

If you are currently considering getting a new website developed or redeveloping an existing web site, then we suggest that you consider choosing the WordPress web content publishing platform.

(WordPress can improve your website results!)

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

WordPress Themes – Instant Web Site Design

WordPress themes are unique web design template systems that enable you to instantly change the look of your website without touching the site’s content and modifying any core software.

There are literally thousands of great-looking WordPress themes available that you can install on your site. Many of these are either free of charge, or can be bought for a relatively reasonable price, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes nowadays are responsive and provide users with flexible and customizable options for changing your site’s design settings like the color, elements like menus, headers, footers and site typography, page layouts and more. Themes are just part of what makes WordPress an ideal tool for helping you create a design for your website that helps your business.

You can learn about WP themes here:

• WP For Newbies – An Introduction To Themes

Plugins – Powerful Features

Another great reason to choose the WordPress CMS is that WordPress provides site owners with almost unlimited features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

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

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

WordPress plugins can help you overcome these problems quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a feature that needs to be integrated with your website, just install a plugin that will get what you need done.

Want a plugin that will notify you about any problems with your site such as hyperlinks not working, audios not playing, pictures that aren’t showing or even alert you if your whole site is down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about problems so you can correct these immediately!

Need a plugin that will transform your website into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce solution? Again, no problem! There are several WordPress plugins that will help you sell products online and provide your customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add products to a cart, use discount coupons, purchase using credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and confirmations, etc.

And just like WordPress themes, there are thousands of great plugins created for WordPress users that you can install on your website for free, or can be bought for a relatively small price, once again, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WP Plugins)

Learn more about WP plugins here:

• Using WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Enhance Your Site’s Capabilities

WordPress – A Rich Website User Experience

In addition to being able to correct problems caused by a poorly-designed web site, WordPress can also help you create a great user experience for customers.

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and exciting themes that cover all types of uses and applications and functional plugins that allow customers to connect, engage and interact 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 returning again and again.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers do extensive research online before they make a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rewarding user experience, they will simply move on to another business with a better website or better user experience.

Hopefully, this article 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 using WordPress please see our related posts section.

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