Make A Great First Impression In 30 Seconds Or Less

Your blog is competing with millions of other websites for attention. You have mere seconds to make that all important first impression, mess up and you might as well pack up and learn to knit. What can you do to make a great lasting impression?

Does it surprise you that your blog only has seconds to make a good impression on your brand new visitor? I am sure it wouldn't surprise you that if you make the wrong impression that visitor is highly unlikely to come back? Any user of the web for any length of time will probably be able to list factors that annoy you so much you would never return (irritating "midi" background music is one of my pet peeves) but what about more subtle elements?

It's not just what you say ...

You might not think it if you ever met me and clocked my shabby appearance, but I have a great interest in body language. Psychologists argue a lot about this "fact" but many support the theory that non verbal communication accounts for more than 70% of the message in a conversation. While they disagree on the exact percentage they all agree on the main point, what you say may not be much more important than how you say it.

Meeting a person in real life, we like to think we give them the benefit of the doubt, we tell ourselves that we "see the good in people", but subconsciously anything judged wrong or out of place is logged in our memory and a long lasting picture is being built.

• "Hmmm, he has a rolex watch and cheap shoes"
• "Should I tell him he has a booger hanging out of his nose?"
• "I hate it when people laugh at their own jokes"
• "Ok it's been 30 minutes and you haven't asked about me yet!"
• "Is that a toupee?"
• "She has her dress tucked into her underwear"
• "Oh no, it's her with the onion breath!"
• "boooooriiiing"
• "Uh oh, he is a ________, not our kind if people at all"

Admit it, you have thoughts like these. Note there is very little commentary about the content of the conversation.

Everything from the sound, rhythm and tone of a persons voice to how they make you feel can affect what you think about what the person says. We say we don't judge a book by its cover but are swayed by presentation all the time. Within minutes, or maybe even seconds, we have made our minds up. What is more worrying is it is surprisingly hard to change that opinion, regardless of how open minded and fair we think we are. If you ever think of speed dating I am sorry to increase your stress, but knowing this fact might actually put you ahead! Tip number one, always carry breath mints.

Speed dating and blogs

What has speed dating got to do with blogs? Everything it seems. Usability experts say you have even less time to make a good impression on the web than you do in real life. It is not "rude" to click away from a website in mid conversation while in the real world you would at least need to fake a nosebleed or concoct some other excuse to escape.

In fact there are services that make looking at blogs a great deal like speed dating where you have a constant stream of blogs all trying to get into your bookmarks in 30 seconds. Don't believe me? Put it to the test. Sign up to BlogExplosion or one of the similar services and start surfing member blog sites and be aware of your decision making process.

With those services you have 30 seconds to make up your mind, I bet you don't need to whole 30 seconds on every blog. Further to that I bet there are blogs that you do not need even 15 seconds. For a long time 15 seconds was considered the length of time people would wait before clicking away from a website. This time has been debated and debunked or re-enforced since but it just shows how little time you have. Blogs have a lot to communicate in those few seconds if you are going to get another post view let alone a subscriber.

Back to BlogExplosion, after the first four or five blog views do you find yourself making snap judgements? Are you looking at the positives or the negatives? Some of us notice what is there others note what is absent. Do you get irritated by niggles or things that cheapen blogs? Services such as these might be more exaggerated but the same judgements are made when a visitor parachutes in from a search engine to a page four clicks deep.

What first impression does your blog give?

Take a look at your own blog with fresh eyes or get a trusted friend to take a look. Imagine that you are visiting for the first time. Think through the things a visitor might want to know and what you want to communicate.

• Who is this blog aimed at? (And am I target audience)
• What is the blog about? (Does it interest me?)
• Who is the blogger? (Do I like them?)
• What is this post about? (Is it what I was looking for?)
• Are there more posts that might interest me?
• What can I do here?
• How do I subscribe?

What are the first pieces of information that the visitor is presented with? If all the information at the top of your template is advertising you might want to reconsider your layout. While you might get a great click through rate, if your goal is repeat visits this is not going to help.

Making a great impression

How can you communicate what your blog is about? Some blogs do this well with the blog title and strap line. "Helping bloggers succeed" may be enough for most visitors to at least know that the blog is "for bloggers". Blogs on the other hand that say "Chris' blog. Stuff I am thinking about." does not communicate who your blog is for or who it is aimed at.

At this point you might be thinking "my blog is mine I will do what I want!" or "they only have to read my content to know what it is about". Fine, it is your blog of course. Just remember your visitors are in a rush. If you want to earn an income from your blog you do not want to make your visitor work harder or think more than they need to. Many visitors will not read further than the first few lines to decide prematurely the blog isn't for them and those that go further will only skim.

Address your Target Audience

You need the visitor to think "this is for me".

If your blog is for pregnant ladies, stamp collectors, hamster breeders, etc it might be worth saying so. For example "The Number 1 resource for walrus polishers". If your visitor is keen on shiny water based mammals then you will have captured their attention right there, and remember these lines of text often appear in search engine results and links from other blogs too, first impressions can be made even before the visitor arrives!

Benefits Benefits Benefits

Your visitor might well be interested that you are professor of walrus polishing at the university of marine biology but that would not be enough to make them subscribe. You need to think like the visitor; WIIFM ("What's in it for me").

Many blog templates will accommodate an "about box". This gives you a small opportunity to get across a little teaser about your blog, what it is about, who it is for, who it is written by and why you should read it. I would recommend you at least try it even if you have a full bodied "about page".

Is this blog open for business?

If the visitor has landed on your blog homepage then they will most likely see a list of posts. Try to make sure each post is as good as it can be because the first post they see is an ambassador for the whole blog. Also this reinforces the need to post "regularly", ie. your last post ought not to be six months old. Does your blog communicate "lively vibrant community" or "dead, unloved blog corpse"?

Us or Them? Me or We?

Regardless of how open minded you are people are more inclined to like people like them. We look for familiarity and conformity. Test this theory by visiting a site with opposing political or religious views. Once you have identified a target audience you need to show that you really are one of that gang with the words and phrases you use and the ways you express yourself.

Also people like to be included, don't make your blog all "me me me", instead make it "you" and "we". Encourage discussion rather than one sided ranting from your own personal online soap box.

Powerful headlines, skimable posts

Good headlines will communicate what your post is about. After that you need to make sure your posts are formatted to be scanned and skimmed. Use bullets and subheads, just like (ok, better than) this post!

Pictures are the fastest way of communicating what your blog is about and good quality photographs or illustrations can increase the "interestingness" of your blog alone. Obviously ensure you have the rights to use the pictures, even better if they are your own. Photographs with descriptive figure text are great for scannable posts, people look at the pictures then read what they represent and get drawn into the narrative.

Photographs and cartoons also add "colour" to your blog and make the template look more lively. Consider a graphical header if you haven't already got one. I find graphics in logos jump out far more than straight text in the same old fonts.

Where am I? Where can I go?

The remaining factors deal with navigation. At this point your visitor might be warm towards you and might well have enjoyed your post but could be thinking it was a one-off. Why should they come back?

You need to show that this isn't the only great post at your blog, there are lots of other lovely delights just one click away. Show in your template a buffet of brilliant blog posts, use category links and related posts. Have a best of or most popular bar. Don't rely on age based navigation, your reader needs to see headlines and good ones at that.

Summary

Take a good hard look at your blog. Get others to give their opinion. You only have one chance to make a good impression, work hard to make it a good one!