Last Updated on May 24, 2023 by Paula

We all know how important first impressions are. When we meet someone in person we have 7 seconds to make a good one. Online we have 50 milliseconds! That’s not much time to grab your reader’s attention and keep them on your website!

Let’s look at what you need to do to make sure your website makes a great first impression.

Clear branding

Branding isn’t just about your logo, colors, and fonts. it goes so much deeper than that. Yes, those are a part of your branding. They are your branding assets that represent what your brand is all about.

So, what is your brand all about? 

Branding is about who you are, who you serve, and how you help them. It’s also about what you want your potential clients and customers to think about when they think about your brand. What’s it like working with you? What experience do your clients and customers come away with? While you can’t 100% control what others think about you, you can influence it by working to create a positive experience for each and every person your business comes in contact with.

Your business’s values and mission statement are also an important part of your branding. People want to work with companies that have similar values to their own, so be sure that you are communicating this in your branding.

Being very clear on these things in your website’s messaging will ensure that when your ideal reader lands on your website they want to stick around.

A clear customer/visitor journey

When a reader lands on your website, what is the main action that you want them to take? Do you want them to sign up for your email list? Read your latest blog post? Whatever it is make that first step crystal clear for them. Then once they take that first step what is the next step you want them to take?

Using myself as an example, my ultimate goal is for them to book a call with me. But someone who has just landed on my website most likely isn’t going to immediately book a call with me.  So I lead them from my homepage to my services page with a clear call to action so they can learn about what I do. On the services pages, I have another clear CTA that invites them to book a discovery call with me.

Another note on the customer journey is to have a clear and simple main navigation. Don’t overwhelm your visitor with too many choices. Instead, only include the most important pages in your main menu. You can include the remaining links in your footer. The footer is the section at the bottom of all your pages.

Showcasing of your valuable and helpful free content

You spent a lot of time creating your free offers, so don’t be shy about showing them off! Here are a few good places to include a Call to Action to sign up for your free offer.

1. If signing up for your free offer is the main goal you have for visitors to your website, then include a CTA for it in your homepage’s hero section. The hero section is the first someone sees when they land on your website’s homepage.
2. Also, include it in a section closer to the bottom of your homepage using new copy and a differently worded CTA.
3. In your blog’s sidebar. This will be on every blog post on your website so you will be increasing your chances of visitors noticing it and signing up.
4. In your blog’s footer. Again, this will be on every page of your website and is valuable real estate. Take advantage of it!
5. A button CTA in your main navigation. This can be something simple but descriptive like “Free Masterclass” or “Resource Library.”
6. An exit intent pop-up. This means when someone goes to exit your website by closing the tab, they get another chance at your freebie in a pop-up!
7. A sign-up form embedded in your blog posts. This is especially useful if the blog post relates back to the freebie in some way.

They say that a consumer has to view something 7 times before they will take an action on it, so don’t worry that you’re showing your offer too many times. You need to so you will get your desired result!

Good customer service

How easy it for visitors to contact you? Make sure that you have a contact page with the best method of how to contact you available. This can be an email address or a contact form or both. If you offer services, you may want to include a link to your booking calendar as well.

Chatbots are another great way to communicate with your visitors. They can simply pop in their question and you can answer if you’re available that is. If you’re not available, they can still leave a message and you can answer during your office hours. Check out Chatra for just one example of a chatbot.

An FAQ page is also a great way to give your visitors the info they need, especially if you get a lot of the same questions over and over. If you can only think of a few FAQs consider adding them to your contact page.

Content that is accessible for all

Accessibility is about ensuring that your website and its content are accessible to everyone, including your visitors with disabilities like hearing or vision impairments. Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Make sure your font is easy to read. Google recommends at least 18px for the body text of your website. Also, look at the weight of your font. If you go too light this can also make your font hard to read.
2. Clearly describe your links and button. Instead of “Click here” or “Submit” try “Click here to read my New Blog Post” or  “Click to Submit your Application.”
3. Use an underline or a color that stands out for your links so they are easy to recognize.
4. Include Alt Text on all your images and clearly describe what is in the image for screen readers.
5. Make sure that there is a good contrast between your font and background. If you’re not sure if you have enough contrast use a tool like Colorable to see if you pass or fail.

A Fast Loading Website

Site speed is important to your visitors and to Google. In fact, Google places such a high value on it because it’s important to your visitors. The expected goal for website loading time is 2 seconds or less. But let’s be real, this isn’t obtainable for most of us unless you want a bare-bones website. Instead aim to make your individual website load as fast as you can. A great place to test your site’s speed is www.webpagetest.org. You’ll get a waterfall view of your files so you can see which files are taking the longest to load. Tip: copy your URL from your browser so that you have your exact URL to get accurate results. 

Here are a few things you can do to help with site speed:

1. Properly size and optimize all your images. For most of us, images are the biggest culprits in slowing our websites down.
2. Audit your plugins. Do you have plugins you aren’t using anymore but never removed? Do you have two plugins that do the same thing? If you answered yes, remove these unnecessary plugins.
3. Research your plugins. When you did the speed test above, did you notice if any plugins were affecting your speed in a big way? If so, do some research to see if there is a lighter-weight plugin that will do the same thing. But if you really love that particular plugin, don’t worry about it, if you feel you can live with the small increase in load time.
4. Use a plugin like WP-optimize to clean up your database. This plugin will remove spam comments, post revisions that you don’t need, pingbacks, trackbacks. All kinds of necessary things that take up room and slow down your site. WP-optimize also has an option for cache. If you are already using a plugin for this, be sure to turn this feature off.
5. Consider using a CDN. A CDN is a network of servers placed around the world that help deliver content to users as fast as possible. Check with your host to see of they offer this. If not, try Cloudflare a popular CDN that is free.

Did you notice what these tips all have in common? They are all about creating a great user experience for your visitors. If you always keep your user in mind when building your website and creating content, then you’ll be sure to make a great first impression!

Need a web designer?

It’s time you have a beautiful and functional website that truly feels like you and is aligned with your mission! My motto is let your website do the selling for you!

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Need a web designer?

It’s time you have a beautiful and functional website that truly feels like you and is aligned with your mission! My motto is let your website do the selling for you!

Want to know how we can work together? Click the button below.

Tell me about your services