What Your Website Says About You

Your website is your digital storefront. Now, more than ever, people are making decisions about whether they want to work with you or not based on what they discover about you online.

In short, first impressions matter.

What does your website design say about the person or business you are?

A good, professional design can reveal a lot about you and your business…

• whether you focus on your customers or not
• how you handle situation (in this case contracts)
• if you’re easy to get a hold of and whether you’re easy to deal with
• whether you pay attention to detail or not
• if your trustworthy

Here are a couple of areas you should focus on:

• Poor Layout – sites that are difficult to navigate are a poor reflection on you. It might suggest you’re not easy to deal with. Look at your site navigation and ask yourself, how can I make it easier for site visitors to find what they’re looking for? 
• Too Much Text – a very quick way to bore your readers is to write run-on sentences and long paragraphs of text with no images. Remember, people have a short attention span, so the more you break up your text, the better. And it doesn’t hurt to include a few images in there as well.
• It’s Too Difficult To Contact Someone – Look at your website right now, how easy is it to find your contact information? Is it readily available? If it’s not, what message do you think that’s sending?
• Credibility – How up-to-date is the information on your site? If you haven’t updated your site in 6 months, you’re loosing credibility. Buyers and sellers want to work with the local market expert – someone who knows the market. They’re coming to your site to see if you can be that resource for them. But if your content is outdated, how reliable does that say your are?

A Quick Exercise…

Look at your website, what three words do you think effectively communicate your site design right now?

• Professional?
• Organized?
• Easy to Navigate?

Ask a few random people to look at your website, then ask them to think of the three (design) words that come to mind. If they say “cluttered, busy, difficult to navigate” then you’ve got some work to do.