You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
Will Rogers
This is a post in a series of posts that explore digital technologies that can be leveraged to amplify a business website capacity to generate leads.ย This series builds up the rationale for a business website to undergo its digital transformation in order to provide a user experience more conducive to generate a lead.
Lead generation on a website is as much about reputation and branding as first impressions. A business with a poorly designed website will still get enquiry leads if they have a solid reputation for quality service/product. Similarly, a startup with a well-designed website or mobile app have better chances of scoring leads.
However, even the best designs will fail to attract interest if the business reputation is damaged. A lead today may be a customer tomorrow and therefore a relationship needs to be established from the start and nurtured to build trust, therefore the first impressions matter and chances are new leads will encounter your website first. As Will Rogers once famously said, โYou never get a second chance to make a first impression!โ.
Seek to Improve Your Website
So what does it take to make a good impression on your business website? This is not an easy riddle to solve, and depends very much on the kind of business youโre in. Some services or products that require a lot of investment (capital and/or time) will require careful and considerable research from the customer before confirming their decision. In such cases, showing a mastery of your craft and being able to communicate the essence of your expertise in a succinct manner, case-studies in hand, will go a long way to establish a good impression.
On the other hand, a business that trades in services/products that have a lot of competition and are fast evolving, needs to distinguish itself from the crowd, and as such be creative in its marketing and design to shine on the first impression, and yet without being intrusive and pushy.
First impressions are not about fancy bells and whistles, and more about functionality and purpose. Do you have the right content, is it relevant to the landing page your visitor found? Does your site load fast as no one likes to wait for pages to load? Is your site navigation intuitive, is it easy for visitors to find the information they need?
Either way, a visitor will eventually need to register for more information and submit their contact information to convert as a lead. However, there is no magic recipe to ensure your website design and content will resonate with your visitors and generate leads, but it is possible to optimise your site through analysis and testing.