When you walk into a store what do you often remember?
You probably notice the atmosphere and design elements. Your senses are triggered.
You also likely have an experience with an employee. That employee is a reflection of the brand and the brand’s culture.
A good store owner knows that every employee is responsible for representing the right culture and experience for customers.
Most business owners realize the importance of personality and culture. But with a website it can be difficult to get that personality to come through. A website doesn’t seem like a person, but your website really is an employee.
Your website is a salesperson. A new visitor, a potential customer, comes to the site. They have an initial experience and if the site does its job a sale is eventually made. Maybe it’s not done on the first visit. It could be, but it doesn’t have to be. Not all customers are ready to buy on the first visit in real life depending on the business. But eventually the goal is to make a sale or at the very least leave the visitor with a good experience so they refer others.
Your salespeople and employees likely have a certain personality. You hire them to match your company personality and culture.
But how do you make it so your website has the same company personality?
Here are some ideas…
1. Ease Into Personality
People may come to your business with some expectations. But they also may come in cold. They may have heard things, but they’re not always entirely sure what to expect. So it’s good to ease into your personality. Being too forward in any new relationship is very risky. You can hit a home run, but may turn away a perfectly good customer.
For example, just because your company likes to have fun doesn’t mean you need whistles and confetti and a pie in the face when a brand new visitor walks in the front door. That may be fine for a long time customer, but probably not right away.
On your website, it’s best to stick with the basics on the homepage especially the first image and heading. State what you provide for your target customers. Keep it simple while still clearly explaining who you are and what you do.
It’s no different than a normal first interaction with someone in real life. You make your introductions and move on from there slowly adding in some personality elements.
2. Design For First Impressions
When you first meet a potential customer in person your looks say a lot about you. Often it’s good to have a well-fitting company uniform or proper attire. It’s good to have nicely done hair and complexion and all those little details. It seems like looks shouldn’t matter, but humans do make first impressions both in real life and online.
That means that how your site looks at first glance is important. It’s a reflection of your brand and personality. Look at the office and the people in it. The same if you have a store. You’ll get some insight into the proper colors for your website, the proper design features like hard or soft shapes and lines and things like that.
Most visitors coming to your business website are first timers. It’s either their first time or one of their first times. You want to make a good first impression with design. If this were a real life situation you probably wouldn’t overdo things, but you can add some flair and things like that if it’s been good to you in real life interactions with first timers.
3. Case Studies
As a new visitor works their way into your site they’ll start to expect a little personality.
Storytelling can go a long way to show personality.
In a real life encounter it’s common to tell a story about yourself. Storytelling allows for moments where you can showcase your personality. You can include a funny bit in the story; perhaps something self-deprecating.
Case studies are a good point to start telling stories. Testimonials kind of do the same thing too.
Take on your case studies like you’re telling a story. And really you are telling the story of how one of your customers benefitted from working with your company. It provides a lot of information for new people including information about who you are and how you work.
4. How It Works
One of the key questions potential customers almost always ask before working with a business is: How does it work?
Potential customers want to know what to expect from the first step to getting into working with you. It’s especially the case with service businesses, but it’s true to a degree with ecommerce companies that sell products too.
This is another chance for you to tell a story in a way. You’re telling the story of how you will work with a potential customer. They want to know how it will work for them. They would ask the question in person. The difference with a website is you have to anticipate the questions visitors are asking and answer those questions on your site.
That’s not always easy, but the longer you’re in business and the more you pay attention to your sales interactions the more information you’ll have to include in website content.
5. About Page
Some business owners are surprised to learn that About pages are very popular. You’ll often find that the About page is in the top five pages on your website. It could even be in the top 2 or 3 depending on your business and how your site is laid out.
The reason the About page is so popular is that potential customers want to know who they’ll be working with. The About page, as you would guess, should tell them who you are. That means getting into the small talk or background talk you would discuss with someone in person.
You’d tell them about your history, changes that may have happened along the way, things you’ve learned, interests, hobbies, what’s important to you, where you’re located, who you work with, etc. etc. etc.
You can reiterate what you do or provide, but it’s more about you personally. Show yourself. Show your employees. Show your office or location.
6. Video
Finally, video can be a great tool to show personality in various stages on your website. You can use video to show and tell new visitors what you can provide with them.
You could simply have your best salesperson go through the normal conversation they have with a brand new lead. They likely first make introductions and tell the person what the company does or can potentially provide for the visitor. They there might be some more details on then. Perhaps then a little small talk. Then more details on how it works and finally down to the nitty gritty on making a sale.
After that interview, break the video into clips and add them in the appropriate places on your website.
Conclusion
Personality is important in business. You know this from your in-person interactions with new customers. You know that they pay attention to the person you are and the same when they meet your employees.
But it’s not always easy to add personality to your website, but it is easy since your website is really your online salesperson.
Follow the steps and tips above and it will help you to show the personality of your brand and that will help lead to more sales.
