Are you losing prospects because of poor web design? A poorly-built web site can lose you many new customers.

In a world where looks matter, your website’s design can contribute significantly to your business success. Your website is the first thing that your visitor sees and this could affect their purchasing decision.

Think about how you research services nowadays. Even if it’s just for preliminary research, we will typically switch on our smart device and go visit a site before taking the next step.

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

What your customers 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 things than can influence your visitors’ experience and their decision to ultimately buy from you.

Can WordPress Fix Poor Web Design?

Let’s review a few key design issues that can affect your site:

Website Design Problems

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

• Color – Unattractive color schemes affect your results. This also applies to using text and background color. There are ways to specify web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to help ensure that the colors you want to use will display consistently across various mediums. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain unappealing, outdated or just plain hard to read text can turn prospects away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by subtle inconsistencies in the design elements and overpowering use of design elements.
• Layout – How your pages are arranged can significantly impact how users navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other elements are used, where menus are positioned on your site, content columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – Since information is now accessed through a range of devices with different-sized screens and browsers, it’s vitally important that the design of your website be fully responsive. If your website does not display well across all devices, browsers, and platforms, you could lose potential business opportunities.

Functionality Problems

Typical website functionality issues include the following:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is arriving on a page where some hyperlinks don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics are missing. Persistent site errors are not acceptable in any website, especially when you are trying to come across professionally. Your website reflects your company. It’s vitally important therefore, to ensure that all your links, videos, and graphics are working all the time. Sometimes, these problems may be caused by external factors like your hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to make sure that remain proactive and that you get issues addressed as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your business offers visitors certain functionality, then make sure that these functionalities are not limited. For example, if you would like to sell goods or services online, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to choose and add products to a shopping cart, use discounts, purchase using credit cards or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Typically, the area that is most affected because of a poorly-designed website is in the realm of the “user experience”.

A poor user experience can leave a bad taste in users mouths and lead to sharing their dissatisfaction on social networks, forums, review sites, commenting sections, etc., bringing you negative publicity.

Some of the most common problems that can create a disappointing user experience include:

• User-Friendly – Your site must be easy to use and intuitive to navigate. Your service information should be easy to find. Your potential clients 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. videos), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organization – If your site content isn’t well organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential buyers but also existing customers. Having features like descriptive URLs, product and service categories and sections where your content can be easily found will provide users with a good user experience.
• Stimulating Web Site – Customers stick around on websites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that are eye-catching and stimulating. This means finding a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your visitors. For example, highlight hyperlinks which direct users to product pages with beautiful photos or illustrations alongside well-written descriptions. This is effective and can help you improve not just the user experience on your website, but can also lead to more sales and conversions.
• Engaging Website – Another thing that helps visitors want to stick around on your site is to provide interactive features that engage customers, like the ability to leave comments, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your staff via a responsive helpdesk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … You also want visitors to be able to navigate quickly around your website and access your data without waiting around for content to load, so site speed 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 interacting with you online. To reassure your web visitors that your business is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal pages such as a business information page, privacy policy, terms of use, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(Website design problems)

As the above shows, there are many areas that can lead to a poor user experience and negatively impact your business results online. If your web site is poorly built, you run the risk of not only losing prospective paying clients but also current customers as well.

Now … what if you have arrived here because you have an existing site with design problems that are affecting your business?

First, be aware that getting a complete website overhaul can take time and can be somewhat costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you have, especially if it requires extensive coding.

If you are currently considering having a new website built or redeveloping an existing site, then we suggest that you consider using WordPress.

(WordPress can help you improve your website results!)

We plan to publish a lot more information about WordPress on this site, but here are just a few key points to keep in mind about why you should consider WordPress:

WP Themes – Customizable Web Site Design

WordPress themes are unique web design templates that let you completely change the look and feel of your entire website without touching the site’s content or modifying any core site functionality.

There are literally thousands of professional looking themes available that can be downloaded. Many of these are either free, or are extremely well priced, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WP Themes)

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

You can learn about WordPress themes here:

• WP For Beginners – An Overview Of WP Themes

WordPress – Modular Scalability

Another compelling reason to build your site using the WP web content management software is that WordPress provides website owners with scalable features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

WordPress plugins, like themes, integrate easily with your website to provide you with almost unlimited functionality.

Earlier we looked at issues in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly constructed web site could end up costing you business.

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

Need a plugin that will notify you about any issues detected on your website like hyperlinks not working, videos not playing, graphics that are missing or even tell 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!

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 WP plugins that will help you sell products online and provide your users with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add items to a shopping cart, apply discounts, order using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and email confirmations, etc.

And just like WP themes, there are tens of thousands of useful WordPress plugins that you can download and install on your website for free, or are relatively inexpensive and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WP Plugins)

You can learn more about plugins here:

• Using WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Extend Your Site’s Features

WordPress – An Immediate Website User Experience

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

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

As we’ve previously stated, consumers will do research online before they make a purchasing decision. 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 with a better website.

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

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