It's easier to form an opinion than to change one.

– Robert Kruger 29 October 2010

You should have listened to your mother when she said, “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.” She may have been referring to your date to the homecoming dance, but it also applies to many other things, including online marketing.

Your website is responsible for first impressions about your company. Many people feel more comfortable reading about a company and their products or services before talking to a sales person. The decision to do business with you is being made based on how you represent your company on the web. Whether you embrace doing business over the internet or you dislike it, you cannot change the fact that this is how businesses find customers today.

Take a few minutes to click around in your own website. Try to imagine that you have limited understanding about your products and services and even less knowledge about you and your company. Is your message clear? Is it easy to learn who you are, what you do, how you do it, etc.? Does your website instill a sense of trust?

Or … try the same exercise with a friend who has little experience with your website. Let them explore your site without your help (keep your mouth shut and your eyes open). Watch for frustration. Let them tell you when they think they have a clear picture about you and your products. Observe how long it took them to get answers, and then ask them to describe your company and your products based on what they learned from your website.

There are many reasons why an online prospect may leave without contacting you. Here are some of the biggest reasons.

• Your website looks out-of-date. People do form opinions based on looks, and the public’s sense of taste is constantly changing. As an added challenge, national brands set the standard for how all websites should look. You may not directly compete head-to-head with BMW or The North Face or Smucker’s, but if someone leaves one of these sites and lands on yours, they can’t help making a comparison. If you don’t have training and experience in design, talk to someone who does. Getting design right is not as easy as you may think.
• The information on your website is difficult to understand. You may need to describe complex concepts in simpler terms to gain customer acceptance. You may need to tell fewer details to prevent site visitors from becoming overwhelmed. Offer a version of your story that can be fully digested in less than a minute. If the prospect is still interested, they can dig deeper into your website or reach out and contact you. Like design, good copywriting requires talent and training.
• Your website is poorly organized. Customers will not tolerate wasting their time. There may be a wonderful explanation about who you are and why the prospect should do business with you, but if that explanation is difficult to locate, it isn’t helping you win business because no one is seeing it. Even if you carefully planned your information architecture when you first built your website, changes and additions to your content may have muddled your message.
• Your site doesn’t seem credible. If you make your products or services available for online sales, perhaps your site makes potential customers nervous about giving you a credit card number. There are many ways to scare away online purchasers. Your website may not have a clear policy statement, or your security certificate may have issues. Web browsers (particularly Internet Explorer) warn site visitors of these issues with error messages that recommend leaving the suspect website. Your shopping process may not follow current standards. If it feels wrong, people will bail out.

A well-constructed, content-managed website fixes these issues. The good news is that there are a lot of potential customers who have not heard of you yet. Get current and professional with your web presence, and you will make a better first impression.

Give us a call at 800-707-0106 x:123 or request more information online. We can help you connect with internet customers.