Is Your Website Killing Your Company?
The other day I visited a high-rise office that couldn’t have been more impressive. A beautiful company sign greeted me at the entrance, plush leather chairs tucked me into a mahogany conference table. No doubt rent was considerable, but the company deemed it a worthy expenditure — after all, they have to look professional.
But that’s the thing. To the majority of customers and potential customers, they don’t.
While their offices look like the set of a TV law firm, their website was built for $4,000 on a standard template. Random boxes and sidebars, stock imagery I’ve seen on a thousand other websites.
It looks amateurish, made in a basement. It looks like the company is one guy on the weekends instead of a team of dedicated employees in a gorgeous suite in Center City Philadelphia.
This company is correct that appearance is important, but they put their efforts into the wrong appearance. I’m all for employees being comfortable in their workplace, so I’m not advocating working in a dump. But way way way more customers visit their website than their office. Way way way more consumers who are considering purchasing their service interact with their contact form than sit in their conference room. It’s the company’s website that needs to look professional. It’s the website that needs to impress.
A key element of good design is polish. The feeling that everything works as it should. The attention paid to the details that by themselves may go unnoticed but as a whole add to a feeling of completeness and care. The more polished a website, the better consumers feel about that company. It shows that the details matter to you, and that translates into a belief that the consumer matters to you.
The whole first impression thing is true. But your office is not most potential customers’ first impression. Your website is. Make sure you’re giving them something noteworthy.
