The Impact of a First Impression
If you only get one chance to make a first impression…
Is it possible to engineer it?
If you could go back in time and change some of the first impressions you made, would you?
I think most of us would, we all have feelings of “I wish I hadn’t said that” or “I wish I’d have handled it better”…
Am I right?
I know I certainly have…
So with this as a context, can we engineer the first impression people have when they come to our website…
You see, we’re not even there…
But if you were, if you were standing at the door of your website, how would you want to show up?
Because the reality is, our visitors are getting a first impression, and it’s either working in our favour or against it…
Am I right in thinking you’ve never thought of it like this?
Interesting isn’t it?
So, back to standing at the doorway…
What impression do you give?Have you got a smile on your face, or are you looking all professional and business like?
There is an argument that says depending on the industry your website has to have a professional look…
Do we?
Who said?
Or is that just how it’s always been done and so it has become the norm?
It reminds of a story of how a young newly married lady was cooking the Christmas roast for her husband for the first time, and as she’s preparing the ham, she cut both ends off before putting it in the roasting tin.
“Why have you cut off the ends of the ham” the husband asks politely, thinking there’s less to eat and it seems wasteful…
“It’s what my mum alway’s does” she replies
A little perplexed, the husband calls his mother-in-law up on the phone and asks the same question…
“Mom, why do you cut the ends of the hame before putting it in the roasting tin?, it seems a bit of a waste”…
“Oh my dear” she says, “It’s the way I’ve always done it, because that’s what my mom used to do”
The husband, not feeling like he’s got to the bottom of the tale says “I’m going to get to the bottom of this and call your grandmother”…
So he rings his wife’s grandmother, “Grandma,” he starts, “Why did you always cut the ends of the ham off before putting it in the roasting tin?”…
“Oh that’s simple my dear…” she replies…
“It’s so I could fit it in the tin as it was too big for the tin I had”…
And so for the next 2 generations, watching their mother cut off the ends of the ham without knowing the real reason, the new method was created…
And so, I don’t know if it’s true, but I would hazzard a guess that when the earlier websites were built for so called ‘professional services’ the first couple were built to look ‘professional’ (whatever that means), and the method was created.
But let me ask you this…
Do people buy from people?
Do we like to buy from people we like?
Have you ever had a few different salespeople around your house to quote on something?
Did you get a good feeling about one of them and they got the job, rather than it being very logical?
Yeah, me too…
The reason is that we tend to buy on emotion first, and then back up our decision with logic.
Even when we have a health issue and we go to hospital, do we prefer a doctor to be professional or do we prefer that they have a human touch to their personality?
I believe it’s called ‘bedside manner’…
Is it just me who wants to feel that the doctor actually cares about my situation?
That they’re not just ‘professional’ and cold…
Sorry, a couple of rabbit holes we just went down, but I hope you get my point…
Back to first impressions and how this affects websites…
When we visit a website, whether it be conciously or sub-consciously, we get a feeling…
It’s not long before we realise that this person or organisation actually cares about us, or not……
Do you feel it too?
And for me, I want my customers to feel that before they ever give me money…
I believe that we can engineer a favourable first impression…
But it has to be genuine, it has to be heart felt, it has to be purpose driven…
I think we’ve all felt that fake surface level authenticity that gives us a sense of wanting to wash it off after the interraction…
Do you know what I mean, when we can sense plasticity in someones personality…
I personally don’t like it… and I certainly don’t teach it…
No, be genuine, want to help people beyond what you think you can get out of it…
Or I’m not your guy, sorry.
I believe we can win by helping people first and they will return when they’re ready and want to move forward…
And I believe there’s less competition when we do it this way, the waters are not as bloody as W.Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne suggest in their excellent book Blue Ocean Strategy…
We let our competitors fight it out in a race to the bottom of quoting on phone calls and enquiries with the price shopping prospects…
We don’t play that game…
As I mentioned in part 4 of the manifesto we show up with helpful information to problem aware customers, in the calm blue waters where no one else is playing.
We help, we guide and we leave a lasting first impression.
If this resonates with you, and you’d like to go deeper down the web of wonder rabbit hole.