Are you missing out on customers because of a poorly-built web site? No matter how professional your company is, a poorly-designed website could lose you many new customers.

In a world where the way we project ourselves matter, your website’s design is becoming ever more important to the success of your business. Your website is the first thing that a visitor sees and this can affect their purchasing decision.

We typically do things online. Even if it’s only preliminary research, we still jump online and go browse a site first before buying something in-store or online.

Now, put yourself in your customer’s shoes. How does your website appear to online users? Does your site invite people to approach and explore things further, or does it make them confused and unsure about where to go next?

What prospects 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 influence your web visitors’ thoughts and their decision to ultimately buy from you.

Can WordPress Fix Your Poorly-Constructed Website?

Let’s review some of the more important design problems that can affect your web site:

Site Design Issues

Common web design issues that can affect a prospect’s perception about your site include some following:

• Color – Poor color schemes can impact on your results. This also applies to text and background color. There are ways to select web colors correctly and even safe web color palettes to ensure that the color schemes you use will display predictably across different systems. If in doubt, consult a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain boring, outdated and just plain hard to read text can turn visitors away from your site. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic element choices and overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – How you lay out your page content can significantly impact how users navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigational menus, links, and other useful objects.
• Responsiveness – Since websites are now viewed through various devices with different-sized browsers, it’s vitally important that your website’s design be fully responsive. If your web pages do not resize automatically to work across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will lose opportunities.

Functionality Issues

Typical functionality issues include the following:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a page where links don’t work, videos can’t play and images are missing. Subpar functionality is no longer acceptable for a website, especially when you are trying to come across as a professional. Your web presence is a reflection of your company. It’s vitally important therefore, to make sure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and images remain up and running all the time. In some cases, problems may be caused by factors such as your web hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to make sure that you’re always proactive and that all problems are repaired as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your web site offers users certain functionality, then make sure that these functionalities are not limited. For example, if you want to sell products on your site, make sure that you provide users with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add items to a shopping cart, use discount codes, pay with a credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

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

Anything less than a great user experience can leave a bad taste in users mouths and lead to sharing their disappointment in social networks, forums, review sites, commenting sections, etc., bringing you negative publicity.

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

• User-Friendly – Your site needs to be user-friendly. Your service information should be easy to locate. Your visitors want user-friendly features and they want to find things quickly and without disappointment. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable content to your site (e.g. forms and documents), make sure that users are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organization – If your website isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective buyers but also existing customers. Features like search engine-friendly links, product and service categories and sections where related content can be easily found will provide users with a good user experience.
• Stimulating Site – Customers want websites that are easy to use, easy to navigate, and that are stimulating. To achieve this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling web copy that engages your visitors. For example, draw attention to links which direct visitors to your product pages with eye-popping product pictures alongside well-crafted descriptions. This can be very effective and can help improve not just the user experience on your website, but can also lead to more sales and conversions.
• Interactive Site – Another thing that helps to improve user experience on your site is to provide interactive features that engage your customers, like the ability to comment on, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your support staff via a responsive helpdesk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … Additionally, you want visitors to navigate quickly around your website and access your information without waiting around for content to load, so site speed optimization is important.
• Trustworthy Website – 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 company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal compliance pages like a business information page, privacy policy, terms and conditions of use, security information, affiliate disclaimers, etc.

(Website design issues)

As the above shows, there are many areas that can contribute to a poor user experience and impact your business results online. If your website is poorly designed, you run the risk of not only losing potential customers but also current clients too.

Now … what if you have arrived here because you currently have an existing website with design issues that are affecting your business?

First, understand that getting a website overhaul can take time and can be fairly costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you have, especially if the work requires modifying web code.

If you are currently researching the process of getting a new website developed or redeveloping an existing site, then we suggest that you seriously consider choosing WordPress.

(WordPress can help you improve your website results!)

We plan to provide more articles about WordPress on this site, but here are just some key points to keep in mind about why you should choose WordPress:

Themes – Unique Web Design Features

WP themes are unique web site design templates that let you completely change the look of your website in minutes.

There are thousands of professional WP themes available that you can download and install on your site. Many of these are either free, or they can be bought for a relatively reasonable cost, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes built for WordPress are responsive and provide website owners with highly customizable features for changing design settings of your website like color, template elements like headers, footers, menus and styles, layouts and more. Themes are just part of what makes WordPress such a great tool for helping you create a design for your website that helps to improve your business.

Learn about themes here:

• A Newbie’s Guide To Understanding WordPress Themes

Plugins – Virtually Unlimited Functionality

Another great reason to build your site using the WordPress website management platform is that WordPress provides users with powerful functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

Plugins, like WP themes, integrate easily with your website to provide you with almost unlimited scalability.

Earlier in this article we talked about areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built web site could lose you prospective customers.

WP plugins can help you overcome these issues and limitations quite easily. If there is a feature that you want to add to your website, just install a WordPress plugin that will get what you need done.

Need a plugin that will notify you immediately about any problems detected on your site such as hyperlinks not working, videos not streaming, images that aren’t displaying or even alert you if your whole site is down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about issues so you can correct these immediately!

Want a plugin that will turn your site into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce system? Again, no problem! There are several WordPress plugins that will help you sell goods or services online and provide your visitors with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily select and add products to a cart, apply coupons, complete purchases using credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally thousands of useful plugins for WordPress that you can install on your website at no cost, or are extremely well priced, once again, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WP Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• WordPress Plugins – The Easy Way To Enhance Your Website’s Capability

WordPress – An Immediate Website User Experience

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

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

As stated earlier, consumers do research online before making purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rich and engaging user experience, they will simply move on to another business that does provide them with a better website or better user 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 using WordPress for a business website please see our related posts section.

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