Ever notice how, when visiting a company’s website for the first time, you tend to make snap judgments about the company’s overall quality …and, by implication, about the likely quality of its products or services?
Well, you’re not alone; we all do. Which means, by extension, that your prospects are doing the same thing when they visit your site. Over at Savvy B2B Marketing, Michele Linn has been doing a lot of website visits for clients recently, and has done a thoughtful post based on her analysis of the factors about a website that induce such visitor reactions. Here are just a few of those…
- Overall design – Does it connote professionalism? …or sloppiness? Says Michele: “If it looks like it was thrown together, you immediately lose credibility with me. It’s as simple as that.”
- Customer referrals – Prospects like to be reassured that other companies similar to theirs have used your widget successfully. Don’t make it hard to find your client list and/or case studies.
- Currency – We’ve all seen it: a homepage box saying “Come join us at WidgetWorld”, with a date that passed months (sometimes years!) ago. Michele again: “Boom! You just lost credibility with me. If you can’t keep your website updated, it makes me wonder how much attention you are paying to other parts of your business.”
- Clarity – Is it easy for a non-specialized reader to understand what it is that you do? (Technology firms in particular tend to fall victim to presenting their mission in terms that only a fellow member of the priesthood can fathom.)
- Differentiation – Many websites fall down on telling the reader how their solution is unique; so if yours actually does so, it’s an easy way to stand out from the pack.
This is one of those areas that “your best friends won’t tell you” about. But if you have a really best friend who has, or you’ve deduced the problem from all the early exits showing up in your site analytics, then you should run, not walk, to your friendly Web marketing firm; they’re in business to correct – or help you avoid – such problems.
