7 Insider Secrets to take your website from Geek to Chic - and why you should.

If your website isn't dressed for success, it's hurting your business more than you think.

Businesses expect a lot from their websites:

• Quickly engage customers/consumers
• Ramp up Lead-Gen efforts
• Positively differentiate the brand from the competitive set
• Provide useful content to potential and existing customers/consumers
• Make contact information readily available
• Provide useful content to the customer
  

Most websites fall miserably short of achieving these goals.

The culprit - design.

Recent studies show just how important design is to the success of your website and how poor design affects customer behavior. We'll help you understand how and where sites miss the mark, and give you a checklist to help release your website's hidden potential.

You’ve probably said or heard the following:

“We already have a website. Why would we want a new one?”

We hear this. A lot.

The assumption that simply having a website up is enough is easily the biggest mistake companies make online. Most simply don’t understand just how much a poor design, content flow and/or user-experience are hurting their business.

If they were, they’d never stand for it.

Better design = better web traffic and sales leads.

Think of it this way - you walk into a crowded bar. You scan the room – passing over dozens of faces in the blink of an eye. And then, suddenly, you see someone you can’t….take…your…eyes… off…of.

In the blink of an eye you’ve started building the relationship in your head. You’ve made your choice. No one else in the room even matters.

And that is exactly how people surf the Internet.

If your company’s website isn’t among the stand-out crowd, you’re leaving money on the table.

You’ve got 1/10th of a second to make a positive first impression online. Better make it count.

It may be unfair, but people make snap decisions. You do too. Call it intuition, experience, whatever, each of us makes snap decisions about things every day. The truth is, we’re hard-wired to make these types of decisions - which theories say have to do with the Limbic System and Prefrontal Cortex regions of the brain – but I’ll save the science for another post.

The bottom line is – within 50 milliseconds consumers/customers are making the decision whether to stay or leave your website – all based on their first impression.

What drives these impressions? Visuals. How your website look accounts for 94% of visitor’s first impression. Here’s why.

People Buy on Emotion and justify with logic.

It’s true, content is key, but visual interest is what starts the ball rolling. Just like our bar example above, without visual (emotional) engagement, there is little or no intellectual interest. In other words, customers/consumers are not likely to stay and read a website that doesn’t look good to them. Period.

You might think this differs from category to category, but it doesn’t. As consumers (B2B and B2C), we look for pleasing design before engaging with the content.

Studies show that even when content is amazing, it becomes overlooked if the look & feel of the site are poor. This has been proven in study after study – from Google, Stanford and Northumbria University in the UK just to name a few. (Links below)

• Google Full Study
• Google Key Takeaways
• Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility study
• Northumbria University Study
• Journal of Travel Research

Just how important is all this?

You tell me.

• 75% of users admit to making judgments about a company’s credibility based on their website design
• 81% of consumers (B2C) begin their purchase decisions online
• 85% of customers (B2B) begin their purchase decisions online
• 75% of people don’t change their first impression – even if they find out additional positive information later

 Keep in mind this is before anyone at the company level has an opportunity to speak with them. In other words, your website is often your first, and in many cases may be your only, sales representative.

So, what’s the formula for success?

• Take your brand platform & Lead-Gen strategies into account
  Content should be led by what’s relevant to the customer/consumer, not what your web development company believes will rank highest in keyword search. Every major search engine has or is changing their algorithm to adjust for this. Whatever your brand & Lead-Gen strategies are, make sure they drive all of your messaging and content flow (user-experience). The increase in traffic, time on site, organic inbound, backlinks, and (of course) sales will pay off quickly.
  
  

• Avoid Me-Too solutions
  Avoid the desire to look like your competitors. Think about it, if you design something that looks and works just like your competitors, how do you expect your customers/consumers to tell the difference? Your brand is unique. Make sure people your company’s tonality, look, feel and functionality are unique too. Try this, go to several of your competitors sites and put your thumb over the logo. For someone who knew nothing about your company, could they tell the difference beyond the URL? If no, you’ve got an opportunity to differentiate yourself in the marketplace.
  
  

• Get yourself some great visuals
  As these studies prove, great imagery is important. If possible, avoid the desire to use stock photography as a means of saving money. Most stock photography is trite and, worse still, most web design companies don’t delve deeply enough into the competitive set to see where the same image is used by a competitor. If you’ve ever seen your stock image on someone else’s collateral or website, you know what I’m talking about – and it happens all the time.
  
• Lose the column format
  Nothing screams “dated website” like column format with side and top navigation. Choose a design that allows imagery to fill the screen and dominate the page. Not only do big graphics tell a great story, they translate well to mobile devices – which is critical (see below).
  
• Chunk and stack your content
  Websites have to be fast every way they can. Be sure you've nested your content into 6 or less options on the Home page. Simply put, readers see more options as being too much trouble and will navigate away if they perceive the Home page requires "work" to get through.
  
  The Home page should include short, simple statements that guide readers into longer and more detailed copy on secondary pages. This allows visitors to quickly guide their search and gather deeper relevant data only on those subjects that are important to them.
  
  Create blocks of content that make it easy to make a selection quickly. Consumers will stay on your site longer and be willing to go deeper into your content.
  
  
• 3-Click thinking
  From the Home Page your site should allow people to make a complete purchase or engagement decision in 3-clicks. Apple does a great job of this.
  
  Contact information should be available on every page without having to go digging for it.
  
• Responsive web design
  50% of people use mobile devices when shopping, surfing and/or fact-checking online. If your website doesn’t show well on tablets and smartphone, you’re giving them all the reason they need to leave your site.