Managing first impressions

Question:  how can you manage the first impression?  Follow these simple guidelines and your website will be far more effective:

Managing first impressions. 

1. Place graphics and subheads so they draw the eye to where important information is located. 
2. Give the reader visual stepping stones: subheads guiding the eyes to points of relevance in descending order.
3. Use sidebars, quotes, or graphics to break up large chunks of text.
4. Keep in mind that your website needs to reflect what your customers want to learn—not what you want to say.
5. Link to something your visitors will find valuable.
6. Short paragraphs are easier to read, where long ones are tedious. 

In Conclusion.  How can you get an objective first impression of your own website?  You can’t because you are way too familiar with it.  The best you can do is get a consultant to visit the site and catalog true first impressions.  Of course, it helps if that consultant also understands the psychology behind what causes failures and successes in the first impression.

If you'd like a truly objective first impression, shoot me an email: 
michael@aboutpeople.com.

The Biggest Blunders in Marketing: #1 giving the wrong first impression

Successful marketing depends enormously on the first impression. Well, consider that people are too busy today to actually READ your marketing. That means they glance and skim. It's like looking at a stranger and getting that quick burst of impression. Good? Bad? Attractive? Trustworthy? Dangerous? It all happens in about half a secd.

So, how do you create a positive first impression? Two things: design and content. If the design and content are not presented (in the right way), your message will very likely fall on deaf eyes. (There is a tremendous amount of research to substantiate this point.) This goes for ALL marketing, but especially for your website. After all, that is where people go to check out your credibility. So, let's look at design in the context of your website...

The design has value only if it is effective at making the visitor feel comfortable and secure, and guiding the his/her eyes to relevant information. Consider where that person looks first? If that position is not inviting and compelling – game over. The visitor will abort the site. The look needs to be guided by psychology, but very few designers understand psychology. Thus, they tend to make a catastrophic blunder.

They build the top of the marketing page around a generic image that is irrelevant to the visitor (your prospect). An image of a horse or tall buildings might look pretty, but prospects are not looking at marketing hoping to find something pretty.

Research into the eye-movement patterns of people viewing websites clearly shows that those generic photos are a negative, adding zero value to your site. Imagine I walk into your office and say, “I’m looking for a good advisor to handle all my family’s finances,” and you respond by showing me a photo of a horse. How long will I stay in your office?

In the next post, we'll look at the content and how you should approach what you say in order to attract people and engage them.

First Impression and Psychological Value

First Impression and Value

Why is this first impression so important? It tells a visitor IF you have any value for him and IF you value his time and the connection with him.  Websites are packed with locations that can communicate value.  Unfortunately, far too many sites fail to use those locations well. Instead, they make bad decisions that tell the visitor that he is NOT valued.

How are advisors mismanaging these locations?  When their good intentions are perceived by the visitor/prospect as obstacles to getting relevant information quickly.  Let’s look at some of these locations:

1. A Splash screen that introduces your site but gives no value.
2. Pop-ups that insert themselves between the visitor and the content.
3. A layout that is not clear and/or well organized.
4. Irrelevant images.
5. Links that try to trick you into clicking on them.
6. Pop-ups that do not  have a “close” button.
7. An element that blinks.
8. An element that automatically comes up and plays a video or audio.
9. Content that is obviously not written for web reading/skimming.
10. Poor legibility of the content. (small text and stupid color combinations)
11. Links that are not obvious.
12. Fixed page widths set for large screens (thus the right side is cut off on small screens)

As you can see - There are many ways to ruin a website.  Those elements listed above make you look desperate.  And, who in his right mind would so business with someone who's desperate?

The biggest blunder in marketing

Continuing with the idea from the previous post...

The biggest blunder you could make with your website is to give the wrong first impression.  So, what do people see when they visit your site?  They see design and words.  I covered design in the previous post.  Now, let's look at the content.  Read this next piece with your own content in mind:

The relevance of content.   Your content is where your company can demonstrate its true relevance – or not.  On a website, there are many spots you can place relevant content.  However, you absolutely must understand that people do not read websites in a “Z” pattern.   Many years ago - before websites were invented - research discovered that people would move their eyes in a "Z" pattern.  But, those days were slower, and people read more diligently.  Today's world moves much faster, and people so read as much as they skim (major point there).

Look right here!  Because they’re skimming, their eye follows an “F” or “E” pattern. So, map out an E or F on your page, and place a fat (relevant) subhead right there.  With content in mind, here are a few ways most organizations drop the ball in their digital marketing:

• Websites.  People tend to write their website as though it’s a brochure with long sentences, long paragraphs, and no subheads.  They write for reading, rather than for skimming, often simply placing brochure content on the website.
• Blogs.  They write a blog as though it’s a lofty pontification loaded with personal anecdotes and opinions. 
• Email.  They write email believing that it’s the same as direct mail, and assuming that people want to read it. 

The point is... Web sites and other digital marketing media require a completely different approach and logic.  Think in terms of visual stepping stones.  Give the “reader” something to look at, like a series of subheads, that guide the eye to points of relevance in descending order. 

Marketing blunders for financial advisors

Analyze This!

The Biggest Blunders on Advisor Websites

People look for information differently today.  They look mainly at your website.  Why?  Because they want to check you out, to see if you're legitimate and could possibly be trusted. And, that leads us to the most horrible mistake you could make on your website:

                                         

The Biggest Blunder - Giving the wrong first impression

A successful website depends enormously on the first impression. And, that means two things: design and content.  If the design and content are not presented (in the right way), your message will very likely fall on deaf eyes.  (There is a tremendous amount of research to substantiate this point.)

The design has value only if it is effective at making the visitor feel comfortable and secure, and guiding the his/her eyes to relevant information.  Consider where that person looks first?  If that position is not inviting and compelling – game over.  The visitor will abort the site.  The look needs to be guided by psychology, but very few graphic designers understand psychology.  Thus, they tend to make a catastrophic blunder.

They build the top of the marketing page around a generic image that is irrelevant to the visitor (your prospect).  An image of a horse or tall buildings might look pretty, but prospects are not looking at marketing hoping to find something pretty.  Research into the eye-movement patterns of people viewing websites clearly shows that those generic photos are a negative, adding zero value to your site. 

Quick - what's your brand?

In the course of our work, we encounter many professionals who don't understand their Brand. They maintain such dysfunctional ideas of what a Brand is that their Brands become meaningless.

Your company's Brand is more than a logo and tag line. It's more than the sum of your advertising and marketing. It also includes all the people on the front-line, the people who represent your business.

This includes customer service people, sales people, clerical staff, receptionists, repair team, you name it. Anyone who could possibly deliver an opinion about your company - they're all part of the equation, and everything that comes out of their mouths contributes to (or takes away from) your brand. But, the most important mouths are your sales people.

NOTE:  This post was published more than a year ago.  And, it remains as true today as then.  For example - we have new clients who have the wrong people in profoundly important jobs.  One of them has placed a highly analytical person in the front office to greet clients and prospects.  That is the wrong person for the job!  She cares much more about the data-related tasks she's performing than anyone who comes through the door and interrupts her.  The result is, prospects who come through the door see the company as uncaring, unfriendly and unapproachable.  How would you like for that to be part of your brand?

-- Michael Lovas

Question:

Can the specific words you use in your marketing really make that much difference? Absolutely! When you purposefully choose the right words, and deliver them in just the right way, you give your marketing its best chance of success. The specific words can easily mean the difference between success and failure.

We’ve been analyzing marketing psychology for more than 20 years, and I can tell you from experience, it is almost always done wrong. The psychology is the exact point where most people screw up in their marketing.

The biggest mistake is mindlessly simple: they think their information alone is strong enough to inspire people to respond. That is just knuckle-headed thinking. However, in their defense, it's all they know. They just did not learn the right way to approach marketing (and selling).

Logically, your goal should be to inspire people to buy from you – again and again. So, what picture do you need to place in your target market’s mind that will inspire them to take action? Most people seem to think that picture is a customer blissfully reading a contract or the user manual. Again - knuckle-headed.

So, what do you think the right answer is?

-- Michael Lovas