In about one second, your website visitors are going to decide whether they like you or not.
Like it or not, people do judge a book by it’s cover. This is especially the case when people come to your website. They’re asking themselves:
- Does this site look trustworthy?
- Is the information here up-to-date and reliable?
- Who’s the person behind this website (the author)? Does he/she look reliable?
- (If I have a question) can I easily contact someone? Is there a phone number/email/address somewhere?
If they don’t like the color, they’re gone.
Can’t quickly find something? Gone.
Think about it a slightly different way…
Ever go bar hopping and judge a place by it’s atmosphere?
The look, the feel, the sound, et cetera. If you don’t like the place, you walk out and go somewhere else. But if you do like the place, you stick around and have a few drinks.
People are judging your website in much the same way. So doesn’t it make sense to design your site with this in mind? How can you create an atmosphere that makes people want to stick around?
SO TRUE – I spend many a meeting explaining this to folks -especially those who have jumped on this “SEO – does not matter how the site looks/or the value of the content bandwagon…”
🙂 THANK YOU!
Oh, I cam across one site that actually has a really good design. It was professionally done, but completely butchered in terms of content. They stuffed their post headlines with literally about 4-5 sentences full of keywords. And that’s JUST the headline! You can imagine what the rest of the content looked like… ::sigh::
In the end, really it’s just about all around presentation. If you look professional (content AND design), people are going to trust you long enough to hear what you have to say. If you DON’T look professional, it instantly discredits anything you have to say. And that’s a HUGE lost opportunity.
Same goes for online dating profiles… They don’t like your picture? Gone… They don’t like your headline? Gone… 🙂
Hahaha! Funny and oh so true…
Love this! Short post, but definitely made the point! It’s so true, and I know some people are in denial of this fact, or really, really, wana believe that nobody will judge them that quickly – too bad, people DO.
Yep. I think I wrote this for the people who undermine the importance of a good website design. Those that think of it as an afterthought, and yet, hope that their websites help them generate business.
If ya got a bad design, sorry, but I’m not going to trust you. Period.