Take a moment to consider all of the pages within your website that are likely to be first contact points for visitors. It could be said that every page is a possibility, but you will have some key destinations that generate much more visitor traffic – such as home, product or specific landing pages.
For each of these, carry out a “first-time visitor” examination. It might also be an idea to ask some friends or colleagues from outside of your business to do the same – as your impressions are forged through the depth of knowledge you already possess about both your company and its attitudes, products and services.
Rather than a general look, this is with a specific purpose, and it’s where the use of the term “heads-up” applies. It’s highly likely that the initial view any visitor will have of your site is more like picking a broadsheet newspaper off a counter than examining a painting in an art gallery. In other words, they won’t see the complete picture. Their view will probably only be of the top part of the page – in a newspaper, the equivalent of a key headline and some teasers for the content on the inside pages.
Therefore, it isn’t your whole page that has to make that initial positive impression. What a visitor can instantly see has to engage them enough to “open” your site – like reading on through the newspaper. This “opening” might simply involve a willingness to scroll down and view the rest of the first page that they see, or click the visible links to other key pages.
Therefore, if the “head” of a webpage fails to grab a visitor – and in the way they want to be grabbed – the result can be a swift return to the search engine or social media site where their journey began.
This could be even more vital if your website is visited using a mobile device, such as a smartphone, where much less will be instantly viewed. It’s worrying that many corporate websites have not yet recognised the need to be specifically optimised for such visitors, especially as their numbers are increasing exponentially.
Do take a moment for this vital “heads-up” examination and check the immediate effectiveness of your online marketing through a positive web presence.
