Various Factors that Influence and Gives Off Impressions to your Website!

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Visitor’s impression comes natural and as fast as the loading slots into your website. This initial impression is the deciding factor whether a visitor will come back again to your site to explore more. Therefore a first bad impression will be difficult to surmount.

There are various ways in which you can do to make the sudden impact for the first time visitors on your site. I have listed here at least 20 of them hoping to influence the sight and thoughts of the first timers who happen to glance upon your site anxiously hooking them to stay or come back for more.

Influence is the main word. These factors will influence in one way or the other the visitor’s judgment and thinking about your site. Though not that very comprehensive, updating this will be gladly appreciated-please feel free to comment and make some suggestions to include or exclude some points.

Colors - Colors are the first factor that greets your visitors. That is why it is important to greet them in a manner that is pleasing to their eyes. The colors of your site impart huge influence in the overall charisma of your site. If you do not have the knack of a good color combination, you can search online for help. Articles and suggestions are available that might provide you with good information as well as looking at the site of those successful websites and see how they manage to do just that.

Error Messages – The inaccessibility of your site may be hampered by this frequent appearance of error messages. Naturally visitors would have the impression that your site is a broken one and they will scamper around looking for other sites. You can search the internet of the different types of errors that might occur to your site. Blogstorm recently came up with an article about the same topic. Zero in for the obvious problems and errors a visitor might encounter when trying to access your site and repair it immediately.

Loading time – Visitors are quite impatient when it comes to slow loading pages and chances are they will never come back again to that site. Similarly, pages that load pretty fast will encourage them to visit every now and then. Inspect your site using different browsers and see if it loads fast enough to catch up on the visitor’s attention span.

Logo and Branding – It is your identity, businesses big or small are being identified by consumers through their logo and branding. With all the millions upon millions of websites with the same niche as yours, logo and branding will give you distinct identity and will be remembered by it. Of course, you have to have a unique and easy to remember logo and branding scheme, provide one on which visitor’s will remember your site as they see it somewhere else.

Typography and fonts – Just like choosing a book, typography and fonts have a subtle effect on the visitor’s disposition whether to continue on browsing your site. If they found that your site have little fonts that can hurt their eyes while reading or they would need a magnifying glass in order for them to see the tiny fonts-they would scurry away for good.

Navigation - One of the major turn-offs in a site is if you’re trying to find something and you have already wasted too much time and still you can’t find it. Frustration among the visitors will lead them to look for other sites; however, if you provide them with a good navigation, you can lead them to where they should go in an instant without beating around the bush. Create a positive experience to your site through good navigation; this is important if you want to keep them coming back for more.

Layout – If the visitors found that you have a good layout, easy to navigate tabs and pages-definitely they would come back for more and will enjoy browsing through the pages. Good layout will provide them the friendly accommodation that leads them to what they are searching for. Be creative in lay outing your site, even though most website templates have a fixed layout designs, it would be to your advantage if you could tweak it a little to make it flexible.

Advertisements - Naturally, almost all websites have advertisements-visitors often expect it, but not sites that are cluttered with ads wherein it is in every nook and cranny. This is a major turn-off among the visitors; they would think that you establish the site just to put ads and nothing else. Poor ad placement and wrong type of ads can hurt your site more than do well to it. Avoid placing ads that can interfere to your visitor’s purpose, i.e. reading. Study carefully the bad effects of too much ads to your site.

Purpose - The clarity of your website’s purpose should be well defined and identified in the first place by the visitors. Incorporate this through your branding by using a descriptive tag and via your about me/us page. This will also help in effective communication and establishing a good rapport among your visitors.

Associations - As a rule of authority, people always like to be associated with someone popular or powerful. They may not know your site at all but the fact that you know somebody powerful and popular is enough for them to give their confidence in you. If you are using or subscribing to a popular media or services and your visitor is also with the same circle of subscription such as yours, chances are a hidden camaraderie will be created and that will be a good start.

Header Images – Strong impact made by headers gave good first impressions. Strong impact is not synonymous to stuffing your site with big header billboards that takes almost half of your homepage. Provide one with enough size to summarize the character of your site and is visually appealing to the visitor’s eyes.

Accessibility – The common buzzword in the world of internet is accessibility. Visitors come in different demographics and of different status in life. Some are handicapped; others are too young or too old. Others use old browser versions while some possess high-end gadgets. If your website is not accessible to most of these people, chances are you’re just showing up to a limited number of people for quite a time.

Amateurish Items – Unprofessional items inside your site gives off negative impressions to visitors. Items such as low quality hit counters and GIFs generally yields unhelpful notion that your site was designed ten years ago.

Image Quality – There are plenty of high quality images or photo online that gives off good impression for a site. You can avail of low-cost photos with good quality and use it to your advantage. Photos as well as articles convey important messages to your visitors and leaves off good and lasting impression.

Comments and trackbacks – It is inviting for new visitors if they see healthy and lively conversation on your site through comments and trackbacks. It only goes to show that they are in for a lively discussion with lots of people coming in and out. The absence of comments will likely spark a question of whether your site has been visited by many viewers.

The pop-ups and pop-under – Annoying pop-ups and pop-under create bad impression to visitors. If you are planning to have one or the other, just be reminded to have it moderately and as much as possible not too annoyingly. They are still advertisement that serves to entice a visitor but still if not handled well would create a negative effect.

Content Quality – It’s always been the same “content is king” quote running around the internet world for quite some time; but still it’s true until this very day. People will always look up to your site if you have substantial content that would be able to serve visitors in a meaningful way. Quality content is always a big factor to a website; a first time visitor will always remember the positive impact of a good quality content of a website and will always comes back for more.

Tone – Just like content, tone is important in making or breaking a site. Angry, happy, sad or apathy may be felt by your visitors whether you like it or not if you are not fully aware of the tone you are setting out on your site. The rule of the thumb is people don’t really like negative tones in a website. Look deeply in your site and fix necessary flaws.

Audio and Video – If possible, do not let audio and video on your site automatically start. Let your visitor decide whether to push the start button in your video/audio player. Visitors who have multiple tabs open will get annoyed when one of the opened tab suddenly blasts out a sound. Visitors will dash off trying to locate which opened tab is the culprit and hurriedly clicking it off.

Flash Introductions – Flash intros give off impact whether negative or positive. Flash intros serve certain websites, but not all. Music and movie websites are well-off with flash intros while tutorials and formal sites don’t do well with it. If your site doesn’t fall in the category of rock ‘n’ roll, animation or movie sites-avoid it.

Please feel free to add more of your observations and experiences on what factors that influence and gives off the first impression to a website, whether negative or positive.