Are you losing business because of poor web design? No matter how strong your services are, a poorly-built website could end up losing you prospective new customers and important sales.

In a world where attractive design sells, the design of your web site can be very important to the success of your business. Your website is probably the first thing that your visitors see and this can affect their purchasing decision.

People are now turning to the internet to find products and services. Even if we’re only doing preliminary research, we will typically fire up our laptop and go browse a site before making our next move.

Now, try to see things from your prospect’s viewpoint. How does your digital presence appear to others? Does your site invite people to draw closer and explore things further, or does it make them confused and unsure about where to go next?

How your site looks is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other things than can affect your web visitors’ perceptions and their purchasing decisions.

Can WordPress Fix A Poorly-Constructed Web Site?

Let’s take a look at some of the main design problems that can affect your web site’s results:

Website Design Problems

Some of the most common design issues that can affect your user’s perception about your site include:

• Color – Unattractive color combinations affect your results. This also applies to using text and background color. There are ways to pick web colors correctly and even safe web colors to help make sure that the color combinations you select will display predictably across various devices. If in doubt, consult a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically uninteresting, outdated or just plain old ugly images can turn prospects off your site. Visitors can also be affected by design inconsistencies or excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – How you structure your pages can have a significant impact in how visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigation items, links, and other elements are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, content columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – Since online information is now viewed through various devices with different-sized screens and browsers, it’s vitally important that your web design be fully responsive. If your website does not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will lose valuable opportunities.

Website Functionality Problems

Common functionality problems can include:

• Persistent website errors – A huge turn-off for users is arriving on a site where some links don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics aren’t showing. Subpar functionality is not acceptable on any website, especially if your goal is to come across as a professional. Your online presence reflects your company. It’s vitally important therefore, to make sure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and images are working at all times. In some cases, these problems are caused by external factors like your hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to make sure that remain proactive and that you get issues addressed as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your web site offers users specific features or functionalities, then make sure that these features are not limited. For example, if you plan to sell goods or services on your site, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily choose and add items to a shopping cart, use coupons, purchase with credit cards or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices, and email confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Typically, where your business suffers most noticeably due to a poorly-built website 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 frustrations on social sites, user forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

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

• User-Friendly – Your website must be user-friendly. Information about your products and services should not be hard to find. Your customers want user-friendly features and they want to find what they are looking for as quickly and as effortlessly as possible. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable information to your site (e.g. spreadsheets), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organized – If your website isn’t well organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective customers but existing clients as well. Providing features like descriptive links, product and service categories and well-organized sections where your content is grouped or linked together provides users with an enjoyable user experience.
• Stimulating Site – Users stick around on websites that are user friendly, well organized, and that provide them with stimulating options. This requires finding a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling web copy that engages your users. For example, draw attention to hyperlinks that direct customers to your product pages by inserting beautiful photos or illustrations next to well-written product descriptions. This can be very effective and can 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 to improve user experience on your site is to provide interactive features that engage users, like allowing them 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 … Additionally, you want visitors to browse quickly within your site and access your information without waiting around for content to load, so having your site optimized for faster loading pages is important.
• Compliant Website – One of the most important and often most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that users feel confident interacting with you online. To reassure your web visitors that your company is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your website includes legal pages such as a business information page, privacy policy, terms and conditions of use, security information, financial disclaimers, etc.

(Web design problems)

As you can see, there are many areas that can lead to a poor user experience and impact your business results online. If your web site isn’t designed in a user-friendly way, you run the serious risk of not only losing prospective clients but also some of existing customers as well.

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

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

If you are in the process of getting a new website built or redesigning an existing site, then we suggest that you seriously consider building or redesigning your website with WordPress.

(WordPress can help to improve your website results!)

We plan to provide more articles about WordPress 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

WP themes are unique website design templates that enable you to quickly customize the look and feel of your site without touching the site’s content and changing the underlying site functionality.

There are thousands of professional WP themes available that you can install on your website. Many of these are either free of charge, or they are relatively cheap to buy, saving you thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WordPress Themes)

Most themes for WordPress nowadays are fully responsive and provide you with customizable options for changing design settings on your website such as the color, elements like menus, headers, footers, 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 ultimately works for your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• WordPress Themes – An Introduction

Plugins – Virtually Unlimited Scalability

Another compelling reason to build your site using WordPress is that WordPress gives website owners modular functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

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

Earlier in this post we discussed areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built web site can cost you potential customers.

WordPress plugins can help you overcome these problems quite inexpensively. If there is a functionality that you need to add to your website, just install a plugin that will help you get the job done.

Need a plugin that will notify you immediately about any issues on your website such as links not working, videos not streaming, images that are missing or even alert you if your entire web site has gone down? No problems … there are WordPress plugins that can help you fix that, or let you know about problems so you can take immediate corrective action!

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 WordPress plugins that will help you sell products on your site and provide your users with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add products to a shopping cart, enter discount coupons, complete their orders with credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, invoices and email confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are tens of thousands of fantastic plugins that you can download and easily install on your website and are freely available, or that are relatively cheap to purchase and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WP Plugins)

You can learn more about plugins here:

• WP Plugins – Extend Your Web Site’s Capability

WordPress – A Rich Web User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautiful and exciting themes that cover all types of applications and feature-rich plugins that allow customers to connect, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-powered site, WP themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a a highly interactive and engaging user experience that will keep your visitors returning for more.

As we’ve previously stated, consumers will 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 simply move on to another business with a better website.

Hopefully, this information 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 the benefits of using WordPress for a business website please see our related posts section.

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