Your Website as Your First Impression

You might think of a customer’s first impression of your business as the first time they set foot in the door or the minute they say “Hello” to one of your staff on the phone. Actually, your first impression comes even earlier than that. Before you even know your customer is one of your customers, there’s a good chance they have gotten an impression of your business already—from your website! Oftentimes, potential customers will browse your website before they decide to contact you. How often will people make it past this first step? Is this step leaving a lasting impression on people? What should your website have and do to get new customers?

Get them interested. Write with a personal style and voice. Use phrases that are unique to your business and come from a place of assistance and service. A great way to draw people in is through contests. These can be promotions in which they receive a free product or service or even contests that benefit your company, such as choosing the next slogan or fundraising event.

Get them involved.  A forum is an easy, fun way to get a two way conversation going with your customers. People love to express their ideas and hear positive feedback about them. When they feel as though they can ask questions from the comfort of their own home, they will feel more confident when using your products and services.

Get your visuals right. Research shows it only takes two-tenths of a second for an online visitor to form a first opinion of your brand once they’ve gone through your website, which they can do in less than a minute. The first thing they notice is your logo—they want to associate your company name with an image. The navigation menu is seen second, so they can figure out quickly where they need to go. Then users look for social media links, which indicate the business is actively involved in reaching out to their customers. The primary image on the webpage is what users look at next, so if a slideshow can be placed here, you’ll get more information across right away. Finally, potential customers read the written content. That’s a lot to do in less than a minute! That’s why all of these features need to be up to date and on point to get your business’ message across.

Get up to speed. Finally, you want to be sure you website loads fast, in less than 5 seconds. If your site takes too long to load, users will think it doesn’t work and click back to their search for another website.

Your small business website is how you introduce yourself to potential customers. BeyondCustom Websites will make sure your website is attractive, easy to navigate, and engaging for your customers. We know that expertise in SEO, graphic design, content writing, and web programming all need to work together to get your website found and get customers in the door. The best part? We do all the work for you! Contact us today to start working with your own personal, professional web team.

Five Things Your Website Must Have For Success

For optimal website usability, there are some basic rules or guidelines your website needs to follow. While every site is unique, certain features are universally essential. Several aspects come together to make a website successful, but here are five key usability elements you’ll want your website to have.

Be sure the framing around your content is large enough for the viewer to read the text easily. A helpful tip to ensure this is to only include information you know your customers need and want to know. Users should be able to resize their window for the easiest view of your site’s content. If content is in a small box or hard to read, people will leave your site very quickly.

Avoid music on your website, especially music that plays automatically. That goes for video, too. The user is just going to mute or pause it anyway, because frankly, it’s annoying! If music or video is part of the message of your company, make it optional to play or have it on a separate linked page. Remember, no user likes being forced into anything.

Be sure to have a balance between pages that open in a separate window and pages that open in the same window to replace the page they were on. For the most part, separate windows are not needed, unless the page contains something that not every user will read, but some will, such as Terms and Conditions or a link to your Twitter page.

You may have heard this before, but it is vital that your site’s animated features are built in HTML rather than Flash. Flash does not work on mobile devices and will break down on the computer of anyone who does not have the very latest version of Flash. (Beyond Custom Websites doesn’t use Flash and knows how to create the same “wow factor” with HTML so it will actually work!)

Finally, include a site map feature and navigation bars with shortcut links to other pages so that users can easily jump around your site and find exactly what they need. An all too common mistake is to only include such links at the very bottom of pages or hidden on the side somewhere. Users need to get where they want to go quickly.

Beyond Custom Websites focuses on usability and our experts are savvy enough to balance your unique company image with features that get your site traffic, and in turn, increase sales. Contact us and we’ll be sure to create a website with an attractive design and effortless usability for your customers.