Are you missing out on business because of poor web design? A poorly-built web site can cost you valuable business.

In a world where looks matter, your website’s design can be important to the success of your business. Your website is probably the first thing that a visitor sees and this can affect their decision to buy your products or use your services.

Think about how most people do research about services nowadays. Even if it’s just for doing preliminary research, we still turn to our mobile device and go visit someone’s web site first before purchasing products in-store or online.

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

How your site looks is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other factors than can affect your web visitors’ experience and their decision to ultimately move forward and do business with you.

Can WordPress Fix Bad Web Design?

Here are just a few key design problems that can affect your website:

Website Design Issues

Typical design issues that can impact your visitor’s perception of your website include:

• Color – Poor color combinations can impact on your results. This also applies to the use of text and background color. There are ways to choose web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to make sure that the palettes you want to use will display predictably across various devices. If in doubt, seek the services of a web design professional.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically unpleasant, outdated and just plain old ugly graphic elements can turn prospective clients away from your site. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic element choices and excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – How your site is laid out can impact how users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other useful elements are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, page columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – Since information is now viewed by a range of devices with different-sized screens and browsers, it’s vitally important that the design of your website be responsive. If your website does not resize automatically to display your information on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will incur business opportunity losses.

Functionality Problems

Some of the most common website functionality problems include the following:

• Too many errors – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a website where links don’t work, videos don’t play and graphics aren’t displaying. Persistent errors are no longer acceptable, especially when your goal is to come across as a professional. Your website reflects your organization. It’s vitally important to make sure that all your links, videos, and graphics remain up and running all the time. In some cases, problems could be caused by external things like your web hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to make sure that you’re always proactive and that you get issues fixed immediately.
• Feature limitations – If your web site offers visitors specific features, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you plan to sell products online, make sure that you provide visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to choose and add items to a cart, use coupons, complete purchases using credit cards or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Invariably, where prospective customers suffer the most due to a poorly-built site is the “user experience”.

An unpleasant user experience can leave a bad taste in visitors’ mouths and lead to sharing their dissatisfaction in social sites, user forums, review sites, comments, etc ….

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

• Ease Of Use – Your website needs to be user-friendly. Information about your products and services should be easy to locate. Your customers 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. presentation slides), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organization – If your web site isn’t cleanly organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential customers but also existing clients. Having features like descriptive URLs, product and service categories and clearly-defined sections where your content can be easily found provides users with a good experience.
• Eye-Catching Features – Visitors stick around on sites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that are stimulating. To accomplish this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling web copy that engages your users. For example, highlight hyperlinks pointing to your product pages with great photos or illustrations and well-written product descriptions. This is effective and will help improve not only the user experience on your website, but can also lead to more sales and conversions.
• User Interactivity – Another area that helps to improve user experience on your website is providing interactive features that engage your customers, such as the ability 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 … Additionally, you want users to browse quickly through 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 neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make users feel confident interacting with you online. To reassure your visitors that your business is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your website includes legal pages such as a contact page, privacy policy, terms and conditions of use, security information, earnings disclaimers, etc.

(Site design issues)

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

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

First, be aware that getting problems corrected on an existing site can take time and can end up being fairly costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you currently operate, especially if it requires extensive code editing.

If you are currently considering having a new website developed or redesigning an existing web site, then we suggest that you consider building or redesigning your website with WordPress.

(WordPress can help to improve your website results!)

We currently publish a lot more in-depth posts about WordPress on this site, but here are just a few things to keep in mind about why you should choose WordPress:

Themes – Unique Website Design Features

WP themes are unique web design template systems that let you completely change the look of your website with the click of a mouse button.

There are thousands of professionally designed themes available that you can download and easily install on your website. Many of these are either free, or they are extremely affordable, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WP Themes)

Most WordPress themes are fully responsive and provide users with highly customizable features for changing design settings on your website such as color, template elements like menus, headers, footers, layouts and more. This is just part of what makes WordPress an ideal tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that ultimately helps your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• WP For Newbies – An Introduction To Themes

Plugins – Virtually Unlimited Scalability

Another compelling reason to choose WordPress is that WordPress gives users modular features through add-on applications called “plugins.”

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

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

Plugins can help you overcome these issues quite inexpensively. If there is a feature you want to integrate with your website, just install a WordPress plugin that does what you want done.

Want a plugin that will let you know about any problems detected on your site like hyperlinks not working, videos not streaming, images that aren’t displaying or even alert you if your whole web 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!

Need 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 goods or services online and provide your customers with full e-commerce functionality that allow them to easily select and add products to a shopping cart, apply coupons, pay with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, invoices and confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally thousands of fantastic plugins that you can install on your site free of charge, or that are relatively inexpensive, once again, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WP Plugins)

Learn more about plugins here:

• Add New Features And Functionality To Your Blog With Plugins

WordPress – An Engaging Website User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and visually-exciting themes that cover all kinds of applications and plugins that allow visitors to contact, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-powered website, WP themes, plugins and great content, you can create a rich and interactive user experience that will keep users coming back for more.

As stated earlier, consumers will do research online before making purchasing decisions. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rich user experience, these consumers will not return and simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website or better user experience.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you grow your business business online. To learn more about using WordPress please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.

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