You know the rules. Dress well, take care of personal grooming, be friendly and be able to communicate clearly. That first impression is key. And don’t forget about a solid elbow bump – ok maybe not. Save the handshakes and fist bumps for safer times. You hear it all the time, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression”. If you want to succeed you have to get it right the first time. This is true with your digital first impression, too.
In today’s digital world, the first time you meet someone may not be the first time someone has engaged with you. The first interaction is highly likely to be from a visit to your web-site, social media or an email. In fact, a typical B2B customer is 57% through the sales process before they even engage with a sales person. You can ensure a great digital first impressions by creating a beautiful website and running tight social media accounts. Your website is the front door of your business online. Once you get the customer’s attention then we can start getting down to business and accomplishing the goals for your online presence.
If You Build It (Right), They Will Come
A professionally designed and managed website by a team of web developers is the best way to make a lasting first impression. Are you wanting to simply position your brand and your business as an educational source for information? Or is your goal to have a customer make a purchase from you while on your site? A fully functioning and effective website is a powerful marketing tool when it is properly executed. You should be harvesting leads, getting contact information and measuring how your marketing is working from analytics.
The build and look of your website should be professional and coincide with your overall brand. It is more than just style, your website should communicate your company values and motivate visitors to use your company or services.
Here are a few Best Practices for Websites from my team:
- Good design is paramount. By ensuring your website matches your business identity, you can strengthen your brand image and establish credibility.
- Good design also applies to user experience. Make it easy for prospects and customers to find what they need and direct users to do what you want them to do such as complete a contact form or sign up for an email list.
- Optimize for search engines. There are a number of things that need to be done on your website on the front and back end to make your site look irresistible to search engines.
- Accessibility practices not only make your site easy to use for people of all abilities, they improve your user experience.
- Set up analytics. Use the insights from analytics to measure how well your website is working for you and what improvements you can make.
Business owners are sometimes distracted by the pretty web-site and lose focus on what is needed for success. You’re busy running a business, we understand you may not know everything about digitally marketing yourself. That’s why it’s necessary to hire a skilled design agency who are also marketing experts such as Mid-West Family! Lean on us to create a dynamic and influential site that can not only wow with a good first impression, but also help you reach your goals and make you money. Then we’ll talk about how to best drive targeted traffic to your most important pages. But that’s for another day.
If you’re curious about how your site performs, have us do a digital evaluation. Just fill out this Free Digital Analysis form. No obligation – it’s free. We’ll review your website and provide any opportunities for improvement.
