Your Website – First Impressions Count

Have you ever visited a website and everything is all over the place? Or it’s difficult to navigate? So difficult in fact that you decide to leave? You click away and that website owner has just lost a potential customer. Worse, you most likely will NEVER visit that website again. Multiple this by hundreds of visitors and you have the recipe for frustration and anger.

Your blood pressure and tension level however don’t need to dramatically increase. Like everything else in our lives, first impressions count and we usually don’t ever get a second chance to correct the situation or the ability to explain ourselves.

Your website is on the front line. It’s your avenue to increased revenue when used correctly.

Here’s some definite DO’s:

• DO check your website to ensure that every link goes to where it’s supposed to go.
• DO update the content frequently.
• DO ensure that everything works. Place fake orders or use the ‘sandbox’ feature to make sure that the process works. Test. Test. Test.
• DO respond to enquiries quickly. The quicker you respond; most likely you’ll have a paying customer.
• DO check out your competition.
• DO promote your website.
• DO learn HTML.

Here are some definite DON’Ts:

• DON’T settle. Just because things appear to be going well, re-evaluate your website and see where you can improve.
• DON’T be complacent.
• DON’T leave design elements to the last minute.
• DON’T let small issues grow to larger ones.

Your website is much more than a means to an end. It can improve your image or give your product or service more credibility. You decide. It’s your website.