Skip to content

Category: WordPress

Things to Do When Unhappy with Your WordPress Website

If you’re not happy with your WordPress website, you’re probably not the only person, but customers are also disappointed. Probably you feel that you jumped into an online business without clearly understanding what it entails and now regret the outcome.

Information Sign on Shelf

Whether you took the DIY route to create a website or involved someone, you have to take drastic measures to protect your brand when you’re unhappy with the website. Things that might make you dissatisfied with a website are

  • Few inquiries, leads, or sales
  • A site not showing up on search engine results
  • A website that is not mobile-friendly
  • A platform that’s not visually appealing
  • Lack of enough site maintenance
  • High maintenance fees

As mentioned earlier, you might not be the only person unhappy with the WordPress website, and it might be affecting your business. To address this, here are things to do

Look for A Reliable Website Designer

Website issues can be avoided by hiring an expert right from the start. A web designer, who understands the profession well, knows how to work with different CMS, including WordPress, and will work hard to meet your expectations. 

They won’t start the job until they understand your needs, products, business operations, and target audience. The experts will also work with you to provide maintenance and insights that help you achieve more business growth. They can also help you effectively market the website bringing in more business.

Analyze What Went Wrong in The Initial Design

Even before starting a new design, take account of everything you don’t like in the current web design or the issues you’re facing. What mistakes did you make that you need to rectify or avoid as you build a new or modify the website?

Probably, you didn’t take time to qualify different experts, or you cut down on the cost compromising quality. Did you effectively communicate your expectations to the designer? 

Another issue is letting the web designer handle all the work independently and expecting an excellent final product. You have to be actively involved in the entire process to make sure it serves your business and clients perfectly. 

Create an Effective Marketing Plan

If your primary concern is a lowly converting website, reduced sales, and not showing up on search engine results, the SEO or marketing strategy is probably inadequate. You still have to go through the website with an expert to decide whether you should go on with the current design or make adjustments before starting an intensive marketing plan.

Make sure to work with an expert website marketer and indicate the target audience. You’ll have to carry out different online marketing approaches from content creation, email marketing, social media engagement, offers, and discounts.

You’ll also have to analyze the site to check whether it has a low conversion rate which means that you’re not offering what your audience is looking for or your marketing efforts are not well-targeted. Understand your market needs, effectively engage your audience, build credibility and have a good reputation.

Look at Your Competitors Sites

When designing the site, it goes beyond choosing a theme that appeals to you. Check what works best for your industry and type of business. Which features, designs, and even designers are your competitors using? 

Can you draw inspiration from their platforms, notice the weak points, and aim to create a better version? For customer-focused competitors, the designs they choose are inspired by their clients’ needs and preferences. Aim to do the same.

Increase Security Features

Potential clients always check the security features on your site even before browsing through the different pages and categories. Start with getting an SSL certificate, then make all the transactions secure. Clients don’t want to risk their data, including bank details. They’ll check whether you have a robust security system.

Talk to a digital expert to understand the steps to take. Also, realize cyberattacks that expose customers’ data can cost you a lot in lawsuits. Which security features are other players in the industry using?

Create Convenience

One thing that quickly drives traffic away from your site is complicated processes. Can clients find what they’re looking for quickly? Is the site user-friendly? Even when the ordering process is simplified, many customers still want engagement throughout the process. They want to ask you questions, get clarifications, and help to make informed choices. 

To achieve this, be available and attentive. Aim to reply to each customer’s message and pick phone calls. Have a dedicated customer care team that handles all the clients’ communication. This will enable you to grow a large following of happy clients.

Understand Your Customers Needs

What issues or problems would your clients want to solve with the information or products on your site? Are you meeting their expectations? To achieve this, spend time studying the target market. Little details such as the language tone, style, and packaging can be a great deal. 

To create a perfect website, involve your clients in the process. Which features would they like to see included in the design? What challenges are they facing? Is the information on the site helpful and easy to understand? Would they recommend your site to friends and family members?

Meet Your Clients Expectations

Clients are looking for convenience when choosing online services but still want quality, reliable services from trustworthy vendors. Do you deliver what you promise? For instance, when you promise to make same-day deliveries, can your clients rely on your word? Other than the timely deliveries, customers will check the condition of the delivered products.

If you’re finding it hard to keep repeat clients, you probably need to evaluate the quality of products and services offered. Anything from low-quality products, delayed or unprofessional shipment service, high prices, and lack of customer care services can drive customers away. This leads to a poorly converting website. 

As you will realize, many factors lead to problems with your WordPress website. When its conversion rate is low, you won’t grow the business unless you resolve the underlying issues.

An excellent marketing plan won’t help either without solving the i. Most often, it’s not easy to detect the problems unless you engage more with your clients to understand their challenges.

WordPress Security from WordCamp Asheville 2016

One of the coolest things about WordCamp is that they post videos of each talk and presentation on WordPress.tv for viewing afterwards. It give you the chance to see all the great presentations you may have missed, or to revisit the ones you attended.

With so many WordCamps happening all over the world, it is a great resource.

My presentation from WordCamp Asheville 2016, titled WordPress Security: Don’t Be a Target, is now live on WordPress.tv.

Speaking at WordCamp Asheville – June 3 – 5, 2016

Tickets are on sale for WordCamp Asheville, and I hope many of you will come. This is my first opportunity to attend WordCamp, and I’ll actually be getting to speak at it. Come check it out if you are attending.

My presentation will be about WordPress security, how to make yourself less of a target, and how to harden your WordPress website against hackers using freely available tools.

Come say Hi if you attend!

Are You Putting Your WordPress Site at Risk?

WordPress as a platform has been a solid, secure application over the years. The few times a vulnerability has been found, the WP team has been super-fast to patch it, publicize it, and take care of business.

That said, there are two major areas where WordPress lacks in security:

1. Plugins

2. Administrators

There are so many plugins for WordPress, which is part of what makes it so great. However, those plugins can also present attack vectors, and we see evidence of this almost every day.

It was just revealed that most WP users have very little understanding of the risk they are lending to their own websites. Not updating plugins, not updating WP itself, and not doing backups, are the most easily fixed things that people tend to not do.

This puts WP websites at risk, lets them get hacked, and gives WordPress as a whole a bad wrap.

The survey of 503 WordPress users, which took place online during February this year, revealed that WordPress users are more exposed to security problems than expected. In total, 54 percent of respondents said they updated WordPress between once a week and every few weeks, and yet only 24 percent back their websites up — and only 23 percent have received training in the use of tools such as backup plugins.

ZDNet

On that note, I thought I’d mention that the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress, Yoast’s WP SEO, has a new, major vulnerability in it. GO UPDATE!