Dress to impress

Got a great product and awesome customer service to back it up? Wonderful! Now how about your website? Your online visitors will judge your business by how your website makes them feel.

Have you ever jumped on someone’s website and immediately felt confused? Everything’s crowded, there’s 12 different font types, navigation is confusing and the copy is so poorly written that your eyes glaze over. Nothing to see here, move right away is the message loud and clear so you oblige and hop right out of that site.

Case in point: Many years ago, I was with my best friend and her husband in San Diego’s Balboa Park, an amazing 1,200 acres of arts and culture and the San Diego Zoo thrown in for good measure. I was single at the time and Chris was on a mission to find me an American husband so that I could go back to being her neighbour again.

Towards the end of the day, a cute man started a conversation with us while we were browsing through one of Balboa Park’s art galleries. Chris wasted no time in mentioning I was her single friend visiting from Australia. Beaming, he said he was a local tour guide, proffered his business card to prove he was legit, and then offered to take me on a ride on the Zoo’s Aerial tram to see the sunset which was just about to unfold. “We’ll return within 20 minutes” he promised Chris and as the zoo was due to close soon anyway, everyone agreed and off we went. Unfortunately, the sky tram had already closed for the evening so I was given a quick 15-minute run-around zoo tour before heading back to my friends. As we parted, he invited us to join him at a live music gig he was attending that Tuesday.

As Chris and I are heavily into the “trust but verify” theory, we checked out his website that night. And stared agape.

Now you’ve heard of an Eton Mess. This was the San Diego version, sadly not as delicious but just as dishevelled in appearance.

The home page was a jumble of sentences in different colours and typefaces, alongside an equally crowded wall of weblinks of the various tours on offer. We scrolled through this seemingly endless “bulletin board” more overwhelmed than interested, more confused than inspired. Clearly the guy had much to offer, but the distractingly cluttered page did nothing to inspire interest or worse, trust.

We had no words, and he had too many. And not the right sort anyway, to keep us hooked. What was he thinking? We never did turn up at that wine bar.

Your business too will always be judged by how your website makes your visitors feel. You have less than 30 seconds to make a lasting impression on them – remember there are nearly 2 billion websites out there, so consider those seconds as a sort of tik-tok elevator pitch to capture their attention.

Don’t lose potential client dates.  Keep them sticking around with clear, compelling and engaging copy that will make them want to know you more.