David Carpenter is our resident Smart Person on acquiring new customers and generating qualified leads. Check out his take on the importance of Making the First Impression.
Digital marketing professionals know full-well that today’s consumers won’t give you a second chance to make that all-important first impression. However, it’s not just about how customers immediately react to your website, but ultimately about what your overall online footprint says about your company, its products, its services, and most importantly, its approach to business.
Get your team together and come up with a single, engaging message!
Companies should not only consider how well their website acts as a sales funnel, but must also consider how well their blog is laid out, how they engage their audience through social media, and most importantly, how their content is structured. After all, well-researched and well-written content is critical in digital marketing and vital to making the right first impression.
Consumers Have Short Attention Spans So Make Your Point Quickly! With the short attention spans so common among today’s consumers, appealing to your target audience, and quickly motivating them to act, is taking on greater importance. It’s a symbiotic relationship, one where the actions, statements and strategies you employ online today have a direct impact on business tomorrow. So, how has technology changed first impressions?
Answering this aforementioned question involves taking an all-encompassing view. Companies must appreciate how customers see their website or blog while also understanding the importance customers place on a company’s social media presence. Ultimately, for customers, it’s about seeing a consistent message, one where your branding, fonts, logos and style of presentation, are uniform across all online platforms.
Your Company’s Website: A number of enterprises use heat tracking/cursor tracking software as a means of understanding how customers interact with their website. This tool is based on the idea that cursors follow eye movement. This helps companies identify potential high-traffic areas and allows them to modify and adjust product placements, links and those all-important calls-to-action (CTA).
Make the right first impression with a well-designed website layout!
Research by the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) applied this same concept and their results defined the importance of making a good first impression. Their research showed that online visitors to a website take no more than 2.6 seconds to form that critical first impression.
Based on this research, the portions of the website garnering the most user interest included the company’s logo, the website’s search box, the primary images, the bottom of the page, the content itself, and perhaps most importantly, the links to social media.
It’s that last portion that’s most intriguing; website visitors gravitate to social media because they see sharing and engaging others as a critical part of their everyday lives. It affords them an opportunity to take part in your company’s brand while empowering them to share what they appreciate most about your content, your company and its products.
Today’s customers place great importance on a company’s social media presence. As such, your company and its representatives must remain ever-vigilant of how you conduct yourselves online.
Customers Don’t Differentiate Between Online and Offline Interactions: Ultimately, customers want transparency and consistency of message. They don’t differentiate between the company’s “online self” and its off-line interactions. They want to see the same messaging from a company’s social media platform, its blog, its website and its digital advertisements. They also expect company representatives to be an extension of that brand. In essence, they value, appreciate and gravitate to companies with a consistent business message.
Today’s customers have a much deeper connection to the products they buy. In fact, in many ways, they feel a sense of ownership and entitlement. As such, your entire online message must be uniform and transparent while consistently reinforcing your brand’s uniqueness.
Looking to make that all-important first impression, the kind where customers immediately connect with your brand and are incentivized to act? If so, then Contact us.
Posted by David Carpenter founder of Connection Model and resident Digital Media Smart Person.