Are you missing out on business because of poor web design? No matter how strong your services are, a poorly-constructed web site can end up losing you valuable business.

In a world where attractive design sells, the way your web site looks is becoming ever more important to your business success. Your website is the first thing that your prospective buyer sees and this can affect their decision to do business with you.

We typically mostly do it online. Even if it’s only for doing preliminary research, we will probably fire up our laptop and go browse somebody’s web site before making our next move.

Now, try to see things from your prospect’s perspective. How does your web presence appear to others? Does it invite people to draw closer and explore things further, or does it make people hesitant and cautious about where to go next?

What web visitors 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 visitors’ perceptions and their decision to purchase from you.

Can WordPress Help You Fix Bad Web Design?

Let’s take a look at some of the main design issues that can affect your website:

Site Design Problems

Common design issues that can impact your user’s perception of your site include some following:

• Color – Bad color combinations affect your website’s results. This also applies to text and background color. There are ways to pick web colors correctly and even safe web color tools to help make sure that the colors you decide on will display correctly across different devices. If in doubt, seek the services of a professional web designer.
• Design Elements – Web pages that contain unattractive, outdated and just plain ugly images can easily turn visitors away from your website. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic elements and excessive use of design elements.
• Layout – The way you structure your content can impact the way visitors navigate around your site. Layout considerations also include how your navigation items, links, and other objects.
• Responsiveness – Since websites are now viewed by a range of devices with different-sized screens, it’s vitally important that the design of your website be fully responsive. If your website does not resize automatically to display your information on all devices, browsers, and platforms, you will experience potential loss of customers.

Web Site Functionality Issues

Common functionality issues include:

• Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for users is landing on a page where some links don’t work, videos can’t play and images aren’t showing. Persistent site errors are not acceptable, especially when you are trying to come across professionally. Your website reflects your company. It’s important to make sure that all your hyperlinks, videos, and images are running smoothly at all times. In some cases, problems are related to things like your web hosting, or you may not even be aware of it, but it’s important to ensure that remain proactive and that you attend to problems as soon as possible.
• Feature limitations – If your site offers visitors certain features and functionalities, then make sure that these are not limited. For example, if you want to sell products online, make sure that you provide customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add products to a shopping cart, apply coupons, complete their transactions with credit cards or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts, and confirmations, etc.

Poor Web User Experience

Typically, where your business suffers most noticeably because of a poorly-designed web site is the “user experience”.

A disappointing user experience can leave a bad taste in users mouths and lead them to vent their frustrations across social sites, user forums, review sites, commenting sections, etc ….

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

• User-Friendly – Your site needs to be user-friendly. Information about your products and services should be easy to locate. Your visitors want user-friendly features and they want to find what they are looking for quickly and without disappointment. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable files to your site (e.g. videos), make sure that users are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
• Organized – If your site content isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only potential buyers but existing clients also. Having features like descriptive URLs, product and service categories and sections where topic-related content is grouped or linked together provides visitors with a good experience.
• Eye-Catching Web Site – Customers stick around on websites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and that provide them with eye-catching options. This requires aiming for a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling website copy that engages your visitors. For example, highlight links pointing to product pages with great graphics next to well-written product descriptions. This is effective and will help improve not only the user experience on your website, but also grow your sales and conversions.
• Interactive Features – Another aspect that helps to improve user experience on your site is to provide interactive features that engage users, like features that let them\visitors 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 through your site and access your information without waiting around for pages to load, so site loading optimization is important.
• Trustworthy Site – One of the most important and often most ignored aspects of creating a great user experience is to make users feel confident doing business with you online. To reassure your potential buyers that your business is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal compliance pages like a business information page, privacy statement, terms and conditions of usage, security information, FTC disclaimers, etc.

(Web design problems)

As you can see, there are many areas that can contribute to a poor user experience and impact your business success online. If your web site is poorly designed, you run the risk of not only losing potential clients but also your current clients as well.

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

First, keep in mind that getting a complete website overhaul can take time and can also be somewhat costly depending on the problem and what kind of site you currently operate, especially if what needs doing requires a lot of web code editing.

If you are in the process of getting a new website developed or redesigning an existing site, then we highly suggest that you consider using WordPress.

(WordPress can improve your website results!)

We plan to publish a lot more in-depth 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 choose WordPress:

WordPress – Flexible Web Site Design

WordPress themes are unique web design templates that allow you to instantly change the look and feel of your website without affecting the website’s content or modifying the underlying software functionality.

There are thousands of great-looking themes designed for WordPress site owners available that you can download and easily install on your site. Many of these are either freely available, or are relatively cheap to purchase, saving you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

(WP Themes)

Most themes for WordPress are responsive and provide website owners with flexible and customizable features for changing your site’s design like the color, template elements like menus and headers, page layouts and more. This is just one of the many things that make WordPress an ideal tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that ultimately works for your business.

You can learn about themes here:

• Understanding WordPress Themes

Plugins – Modular Features

Another compelling reason to build your site using the WordPress CMS is that WordPress provides site owners with almost unlimited functionality through add-on applications called “plugins.”

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

Earlier in this article we looked at problems in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly constructed website could end up losing you money.

WP plugins can help you overcome these problems quite easily and inexpensively. If there is a functionality you would like integrated with your site, just install a plugin that will do exactly what you want your site to do.

Need a plugin that will let you know about any issues with your website such as hyperlinks not working, audios not streaming, graphics that are missing or even tell you if your entire website is down? No problems … there are plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about issues so you can correct these immediately!

Want a plugin that will let you turn your website into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce business solution? Again, no problem! There are several plugins that will help you sell goods or services on your site and provide your customers with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add items to a shopping cart, use discount codes, purchase with credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and email confirmations, etc.

And just like themes, there are literally thousands of great plugins that you can install on your site at no cost, or that are relatively cheap to buy and will save you hundreds, even thousands of dollars on the cost of web development.

(WP Plugins)

You can learn more about WordPress plugins here:

• Adding New Features And Functionality To Your Blog With Plugins

WordPress – A Rich User Experience

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

WordPress provides beautifully-designed and exciting themes that cover all kinds of uses and functional plugins that allow customers to contact, engage and interact online with you. With the right combination of a WordPress site, WordPress themes, plugins and great content, you can create a very rich user experience that will keep your visitors coming back to your site.

As stated earlier, consumers do extensive research online before they make a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed to provide your visitors with a rewarding user experience, they will not return and simply move on to another business that does offer them a better website and website experience.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you improve your business business 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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