All communication is filtered through personality. And (as you may have noticed in your interpersonal relationships) is what determines how you perceive others – even how you perceive their perceptions. It determines how you react to others, and they you.

Your website visitors are clearly not going to check their personality at your homepage. If anything else, when searching for products and services, users’ personalities will emerge all the more – a purchase is a ‘big deal.’ As we’ve mentioned, online buyers make emotionally based purchases justified by logic only after the sale. Okay, okay. Personality. To be successful online you have to focus on your visitors, not yourself.

A few basic elements that work to convey your website personality and appeal to those of your visitors, are things like look and feel, tone and manner, narrative, emotional flare, etc. Basic design and structural elements are equally as important. Does your homepage copy begin with “Welcome to our website. We are super awesome, and if you will have a look around, you will surely agree with us….” What that says is that a: you’re self centered, and don’t care about your customer, and much less how you can solve their problem.

Let’s take a look at a few other website traits and personality translations:

Characteristic: Website Copy > It takes longer than 4 seconds for my visitors to understand what my site is about.
Message: “We don’t know how to express ourselves,” (or worse) “There’s not much of value here to be expressed.”

Characteristic: Code > It takes longer than 4 seconds for my pages to load
Message: “You will wait.”

Characteristic: Layout / Design > I have unnecessary design elements and images that detract from my important copy, and the focal point of my homepage.
Message: “My marketing tools are incongruent with my business model, and I don’t know how to tell you I can help you.”

A more positive outlook and approach to take is simply, “focus on your visitor.” Your business exists to provide a service, and, if you’re a manufacturer, to increase other companies’ profitability. How can you convey this message? How can you cvey that you CARE enough to think about HOW you convey it?

Example: Your visitors are engineers. This most likely means want to be ‘spoken to’ in a clear, concise, straightforward manner. They want to know product specifications, and they want to find them quickly: An obvious focal point on the home page that conveys what the site is about. They need an overly organized, intuitive, and prominently placed navigation structure, and product focused copy. A collage of ‘industrial related’ images wont do much except detract from your message.

“This is what we do. This is what we offer. We service these industries. If you need XYZ, AB is how we will provide it to you.” Etc, etc.
You’ve now become easy to do business with, because you’ve appealed to the personality of your visitors.

Other links:
Checklist of poor website behaviors (Straightforward, blunt. Very useful, however.)
Measure Your Website Personality (Scholarly. Requires high IQ and attention span)
Who Are You? (Focuses more on creativity and design elements.)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 10:54 am and is filed under Content & Copywriting, General, Usability & Conversions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.