Are you losing business because of poor web design? A poorly-constructed website could end up losing you prospective new clients and a lot of money.

In a world where appearances matter, your website’s design is very important to your business success. Your website is the first thing that your web visitors see and this could affect their decision to buy your products or use your services.

Think about how you do research about products nowadays. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we may turn on our mobile phone and go visit someone’s site before making our next move.

Now, try to see things from your prospect’s point of view. How does your web site appear to others? Does it invite them to approach and explore things further, or does it make people hesitant and unsure about where to go next?

How your website looks is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other factors than can influence your visitors’ experience and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Fix Your Poorly-Built Web Site?

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

Site Design Issues

Common design problems that can affect your user’s perception about your site include some or all of the following:

• Color – Bad color combinations affect your website’s results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are tools that can help you select web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to ensure that the colors you choose will display correctly across various web formats. If in doubt, seek the services of a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain unpleasant, outdated and just plain old hard to read text can turn prospective clients off your site.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 your page content is structured can impact how visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigation items, links, and other objects.
• Responsiveness – As information is now accessed using various devices with different-sized screens and browsers, it’s important that the design of your website be responsive. If your web pages do not display well across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you may lose potential opportunities.

Functionality Issues

Some common website functionality problems may include:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a page where hyperlinks don’t work, videos don’t play and graphics are missing. Frequent errors are no longer acceptable for any website, especially when you are trying to come across as a professional and reliable business. Your online presence is a reflection of your company. It’s vitally important therefore, to make sure that all your links, videos, and graphics remain up and running all the time. In some cases, problems are caused by 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 get issues addressed immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your website offers visitors specific features and functionalities, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you plan to sell goods or services online, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to choose and add products to a cart, use coupons, purchase using credit cards or PayPal, receive 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 visitors’ mouths and lead them to share their disappointment in social networks, user forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

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

• User-Friendly – Your website should be user-friendly. Information about your products and services should be easy to find. Your prospective clients want user-friendly features and they want to find things quickly and with minimal hassle. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable files to your site (e.g. PDF price lists), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organized – If your site content isn’t cleanly organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective customers but also current clients. Features like search engine-friendly URLs, product and service categories and clean sections where your content can be easily found can provide visitors with an enjoyable experience.
• Eye-Catching Web Site – Customers stay longer on websites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that are stimulating. To achieve this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your website users. For example, highlight links which direct visitors to product pages with beautiful graphics alongside well-crafted descriptions. This is effective and can help improve not just the user experience on your site, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• Interactive Website – Another thing that helps customers decide to stay longer on your website is to provide interactive features that engage customers, such as allowing them to leave comments, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your support staff via a responsive help desk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … Additionally, you want users to navigate quickly through your site and access your information without waiting around for content to load, so site loading optimization is important.
• Compliance – 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 customers that your business is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your website includes legal compliance pages such as a contact page, privacy policy, terms of usage, security information, FTC disclaimers, etc.

(Web site design problems)

As the above shows, there are many areas that can contribute to a poor user experience and negatively impact your business results online. If your web site isn’t designed in a user-friendly way, you run the risk of not only losing prospective paying customers but also your current customers too.

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

First, understand that getting a website overhaul can take time and can be quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you own, especially if what needs doing requires a lot of code writing.

If you are in the process of having a new website built or redesigning an existing site, then we recommend that you consider using WordPress.

(WordPress can help you improve your website results!)

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

WP Themes – Unique Web Site Design Features

WP themes are unique website design templates that enable you to immediately customize the look of your entire site without affecting the site’s content and modifying any of the core software.

There are thousands of professional WordPress themes available that can be downloaded. Many of these are either free, or they are relatively cheap, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes nowadays are responsive and provide users with customizable options for changing the design of your site such as the color, elements like menus, headers, footers, page layouts and more. This is just part of what makes WordPress such a powerful tool for helping you create a design for your website that helps your business.

Learn about WP themes here:

• WP For Newbies – An Introduction To WP Themes

WordPress – Virtually Unlimited Functionality

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

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

Earlier we talked about issues like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly constructed web site could cost you customers.

Plugins can help you overcome these issues quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a functionality you want to add to your website, just install a plugin that will help you get things done.

Need a plugin that will notify you about any problems detected with your website such as links not working, audios not streaming, images that are missing or even tell you if your entire website is down? No problems … there are WordPress plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about issues so you can correct these immediately!

Need a plugin that will let you turn your website into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce business solution? Again, no problem! There are several inexpensive WP 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, enter discount codes, complete their transactions using credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and confirmations, etc.

And just like WP themes, there are thousands of useful plugins built for WordPress users that can be downloaded at $0 cost, or are relatively cheap to buy and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WP Plugins)

Learn more about WordPress plugins here:

• Using WP Plugins Expand Your Blog’s Functionality

WordPress – An Enhanced User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful, professional and visually-exciting themes that cover all kinds of uses and functional plugins that allow customers to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-driven website, WP themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a a highly interactive user experience that will keep visitors returning for more.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers nowadays do extensive research online before making purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rewarding user experience, your prospective clients will not return and simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website and better website experience.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WP CMS platform please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.

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