Are you missing out on customers because of poor web design? A poorly-built web site can lose you many new customers.

In a world where first impressions matter, the design of your web site can play a significant part in the success of your business. Your website is probably the first thing that a potential customers see and this could influence their purchasing decision.

People are turning more and more to the internet to find products and services. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we will probably jump online and go browse a website first before buying goods in-store or online.

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

What visitors see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see on your screen) is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can affect your visitors’ perceptions and their decision to ultimately engage with you.

Can WordPress Help You Fix Your Poorly-Constructed Web Site?

Let’s take a look at a few key design problems that can affect your web site’s results and performance:

Web Design Problems

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

• Color – Bad color schemes can affect your website’s results. This also applies to your choice of text and background color. There are ways to pick web colors correctly and even safe web color palettes you can use to ensure that the colors you use will display correctly across different systems. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain unexciting, outdated and just plain ugly graphics can turn visitors away from your site. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic element choices and excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – How you lay out your content can impact the way visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigation items, links, and other useful objects.
• Responsiveness – Since information is now viewed through a range of devices with different-sized browsers, it’s important that your web design be responsive. If your web pages do not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will lose valuable customers.

Website Functionality Issues

Common website functionality issues include the following:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is arriving on a website where links don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics are missing. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable, especially if you are trying to come across as a professional. Your website is a reflection of your organization. It’s important therefore, to make sure that all your links, videos, and images remain working at all times. In some cases, these problems could be related to factors such as your web hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to ensure that remain proactive and that you attend to problems immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your site offers visitors certain features or functionalities, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you want to sell products online, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add items to a shopping cart, apply discount coupons, purchase using credit cards or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Typically, the area that is most affected due to a poorly-built web site is in the realm of the “user experience”.

Anything less than a great user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead them to share their frustrations on social networks, forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

Common issues that can cause a poor user experience include some or all of the following:

• User-Friendly – Your website must be user-friendly. Information about your products and services should be easy to locate. Your prospective buyers want user-friendly features and they want to find things as quickly and as effortlessly as possible. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable content to your site (e.g. PDF reports), make sure that users are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organized – If your site isn’t cleanly organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective clients but existing clients too. Things such as search engine-friendly URLs, product and service categories and well-organized sections where topic-related content can be easily found can provide users with a good experience.
• Stimulating Web Site – Customers stick around on sites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that provide them with stimulating options. This requires striving for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your visitors. For example, highlight links which point to product pages with great product pictures beside well-written product descriptions. This is very effective and can help improve not just the user experience on your site, but can also lead to more sales and conversions.
• Engaging Features – Another thing that helps to improve user experience on your site is to provide interactive features that engage users, 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 move quickly through your site and access your data without waiting around for pages to load, so having your site optimized for faster loading pages is important.
• Reassuring Website – One of the most important and often neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to ensure that users feel confident interacting with you online. To reassure your potential buyers that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal compliance pages like a contact page, privacy statement, terms and conditions of usage, security information, affiliate disclaimers, etc.

(Web site design problems)

As you can see, there are many areas that can lead 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 risk of not only losing prospective customers but also your current clients too.

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

First, understand that getting issues addressed on an existing site can take time and can end up being quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you currently own, especially if what needs doing requires extensive web code editing.

If you are researching the process of getting a new website developed or redesigning an existing web site, then we strongly suggest that you consider building or redesigning your site with the WordPress website publishing platform.

(WordPress can help improve your website results!)

We plan to share a lot more in-depth articles about the benefits and advantages of the WordPress platform on this site, but here are just some of the things to keep in mind about why you should seriously choose WordPress:

WordPress – Unique Web Site Design Features

WordPress themes are unique web site design template systems that let you immediately change the look of your site with only a few mouse clicks.

There are thousands of professionally designed WP themes available that can be easily downloaded. Many of these are either freely available, or are extremely affordable, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes are responsive and provide site owners with flexible and customizable features for changing design settings on your website like color, template elements like headers and footers, layouts and more. Themes are just one of the many things that make 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 Business – An Introduction To Themes

WP Plugins – Virtually Unlimited Expansion

Another great reason to choose the WordPress web site management platform is that WordPress gives you almost unlimited functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

WP plugins, like WP themes, integrate with your site to provide you with virtually unlimited features.

Earlier we discussed problems in 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 and limitations quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a functionality that you want integrated into your site, just install a plugin that will help you get the job done.

Want a plugin that will let you know about any problems on your website like hyperlinks not working, audios not streaming, graphics that are missing or even alert you if your whole web site has gone down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about problems so you can correct these immediately!

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 WP plugins that will help you sell goods or services online and provide your users with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily choose and add items to a shopping cart, apply coupons, pay using credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like WP themes, there are thousands of great plugins designed for WordPress site owners that can be downloaded at $0 cost, or that can be bought for a relatively reasonable cost and will save you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WP Plugins)

You can learn more about WordPress plugins here:

• Add New Functionality To Your Site With Plugins

WordPress – An Engaging Web User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and exciting themes that cover all needs and applications and functional plugins that allow customers to connect, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-driven website, WordPress themes, plugins and great content, you can create a a highly interactive user experience that will keep people coming back again and again.

As stated earlier, consumers nowadays do extensive research online before they make a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rich user experience, consumers will not return and simply move on to another business that does provide them with a better website and better website experience.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you grow your business business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website or blog please see other posts we have published on this site.

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