Are you missing out on customers because of a poorly-constructed site? Regardless of how good your products are, a poorly-built web site can end up losing you potential new clients and cause more problems than you can imagine.

In a world where the way we project ourselves matter, how your web site looks is becoming ever more important to the success of your business. Your website may be the first thing that a potential customer sees and this can affect their decision to buy your products and use your services.

Think about how most people do research about products and services nowadays. Even if it’s just for doing preliminary research, we may switch on our smart device and go browse somebody’s site first before purchasing something in-store or online.

Now, try to see things from your customer’s viewpoint. How does your web site appear to others? Does it invite people to draw closer and explore things further, or does it make them confused and cautious about what to do next?

What your prospective customers see “above the fold” (i.e. what you first see in your screen) is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more than can affect your visitors’ experience and their decision to purchase from you.

Can WordPress Help Fix Your Poorly-Built Web Site?

Here are just some key design issues that can affect your web site:

Site Design Problems

Typical web design problems that can impact your user’s perception about your website include:

• Color – Unattractive color combinations can impact on your site’s results. This also applies to text and background color. There are tools to choose web colors correctly and even safe web color tools you can use to ensure that the color schemes you want to use will display predictably across various mediums. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Pages that contain unexciting, outdated or just plain ugly graphics can result in visitors quickly losing interest in away from your site. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic element choices or excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – How you lay out your page content can impact the way users interact with your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigational items, links, and other guiding elements like search boxes are placed, where menus are positioned on your site, content columns, etc ….
• Responsiveness – Since information is now viewed using a range of devices with different-sized screens, it’s important that the design of your website be responsive. If your web pages do not display well on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you could lose valuable customers.

Functionality Problems

Some of the most common functionality problems include:

• Too many errors – A huge turn-off for users is landing on a website where some hyperlinks don’t work, videos don’t play and images aren’t displaying. Frequent site errors are no longer acceptable on any website, especially if 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 remain working all the time. In some cases, problems are caused by things such as your web hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to ensure that you’re consistently proactive and that you attend to all problems as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your site provides visitors specific features and functionalities, then make sure that these features are not limited. For example, if you intend to sell goods or services on your site, make sure that you provide users with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add products to a shopping cart, enter discount coupons, pay with credit cards or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts, and confirmations, etc.

Poor User Experience

Invariably, where your business suffers most noticeably because of 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 to venting their dissatisfaction across social networks, forums, review sites, commenting sections, etc., bringing you unwanted negative attention.

Here are some common issues that can create a poor user experience:

• User-Friendly – Your site should be easy to use and intuitive to navigate. Information about your products and services should not be hard to find. Your potential customers 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. presentation slides), make sure that visitors are given instructions on how to download and access your files.
• Organized – If your website isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective clients but also existing customers. Providing features such as search engine-friendly URLs, product and service categories and well-organized areas where related content is grouped or linked together will help provide visitors with a good experience.
• Compelling Features – Visitors stay longer on websites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that provide them with eye-catching options. To accomplish this you need to strike a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your visitors. For example, draw attention to hyperlinks that direct customers to product pages by inserting professionally-taken photos or illustrations and well-written product descriptions. This is effective and will help you improve not just the user experience on your website, but also improve your sales and conversions.
• User Interactivity – Another thing that helps to improve user experience on your site is providing interactive features that engage visitors, like features that let them\visitors comment on, 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 navigate quickly within your site and access your information without waiting around for pages to load, so having your site optimized for page loading speed is important.
• Compliant Website – One of the most important and often most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to ensure that users feel comfortable doing business with you online. To reassure your web visitors that you are credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure that your website includes legal compliance pages like a contact page, privacy policy, terms of usage, security information, affiliate disclaimers, etc.

(Web 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 isn’t designed in a user-friendly way, you run the serious risk of not only losing prospective customers but also your current customers as well.

Now … what if you have arrived on our site because you currently have an existing website with design issues that you feel could be affecting your business?

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

If you are considering getting a new website developed or upgrading an existing web site, then we suggest that you consider building or redesigning your site with the WordPress web site publishing platform.

(WordPress can improve your website results!)

We plan to provide a lot more posts about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress on this site, but here are just a few key points to keep in mind about why you should consider WordPress:

Themes – Unique Website Design Features

WP themes are unique website design templates that let you easily customize the look and feel of your website without affecting the site’s content or modifying the core site functionality.

There are literally thousands of professionally designed WP themes available that you can download and install on your website. Many of these are either free, or are relatively cheap, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes for WordPress are responsive and provide users with flexible and customizable options for changing design settings of your website like color, elements like headers and footers, layouts and more. Themes are just one of the many things that make WordPress an ideal tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that helps your business.

You can learn about WP themes here:

• WP For Beginners – An Introduction To Themes

WordPress Plugins – Powerful Scalability

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

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

Earlier we discussed areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built website can cost you customers.

Plugins can help you overcome these problems quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a feature that needs to be integrated with your website, just install a WP plugin that does what you need your website to do.

Want a plugin that will let you know about any problems on your website such as links not working, audios not streaming, pictures 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 website into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce solution? Again, no problem! There are several inexpensive WordPress plugins that will help you sell goods or services online and provide your users with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily choose and add items to a shopping cart, apply coupons, complete purchases with credit card or PayPal, receive purchase notifications, receipts and email confirmations, etc.

And just like WP themes, there are tens of thousands of great plugins that can be easily downloaded at no cost, or are extremely affordable and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.

(WordPress Plugins)

Learn more about WordPress plugins here:

• Using WP Plugins To Improve Your Site’s Functionality

WordPress – An Engaging Website User Experience

In addition to being able to correct issues caused by a poorly-built website, WordPress can also help you give your customers a great user experience.

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and exciting themes that cover all types of uses and feature-rich plugins that allow website users to contact, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress-driven website, WP themes, plugins and great content, you can create a rich and enhanced user experience that will keep your visitors returning to your site.

As stated earlier, consumers nowadays will do research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rich user experience, they will simply move on to another business that does provide them with a better website.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you expand your business business online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress please see other posts we have published on this site.

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