When a friend recommends a new local restaurant for your family and you enter it for the first time, what really makes up your mind on how good it is? Sure, the food is important, but you also probably pay close attention to things like the speed at which you’re taken care of, the ambience, the music, and the professionalism of the staff. Honestly, a restaurant is absolutely no different from a website because your visitors look for the exact same qualities.
First Impressions in Affiliate Marketing
Well, your website is not exactly like a restaurant, because it usually takes about 10-20 minutes before a hungry customer realizes that they made a serious mistake in choosing where to dine. In cyberspace, you have mere seconds before your potential customers hit that “back” button and just like that- they’re gone forever. The first impression given by any business is crucial but in the world of affiliate marketing, it’s a thousand times more important.
Statistics for First Impressions in Cyberspace
In the time it takes you to read this sentence, over a one hundred thousand worldwide Buyers entered a website that they found on the search engines for the very first time. Ninety-seven percent of them will make a purchase on the very first link they click if a solid first impression is made, yet 86% will almost immediately leave if the website does not have a professional layout and easy access to the items they are looking for. Think about that for a moment; global websites see well over a million unique impressions per minute and 86-97% of them are either motivated buyers or gone completely within three to five seconds.
Making a Solid First Impression
It is not difficult to make a solid first impression with potential customers in cyberspace. Let’s go back to the restaurant scenario for a moment and think about each of the things a consumer is looking for- an excellent product, fast service, a nice layout, a friendly staff, and an inviting atmosphere. Since you have less than five seconds to convey all of these emotions within your domain, we’d better run through each of them quickly.
Layout
A Nice Layout/ An Inviting Atmosphere means to design a website that is simplistic yet packed with information. It should have a clear navigation pane that is easy to understand, a photograph or two in order to set the tone, and rich accents of color to balance everything out. Of course, you want your affiliate marketing banners throughout the page but do not over-do it either; any website that screams “sales” are often the first ones that consumers run from.
Product
Fast Service/An Excellent Product would refer to your marketing campaign but more importantly, it would also be the information that you provide for consumers. Make sure that your domain has plenty of information that the average person can quickly understand, and always go into detail whenever possible. Likewise, only work with reputable affiliates that offer great products at affordable prices; consumers usually do their homework when they’re ready to make a purchase.
Value
A Friendly Staff would be the tone that your website sets. Take this very article, for example, and rate your level of satisfaction from reading it. Was it helpful? Did it explain something? Can it be a value to you as a consumer? Website visitors answer those very questions in their minds as they visit your domain (in 3-5 seconds!); either you make the right first impression or you do not. To be inside that 97% bracket where over one million potential sales occur each minute, your first impression is certainly worth considering.