Captivate
How to Spark Interest and make customers desparate for an ongoing relationship
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Captivate: How to Get Customers Attention at First Glance
Cue the magical voodoo dance. You're entering the all-important beginning. You've tapped into Love Potion No. 1 of 5 in a series that explores actionable ways to build meaningful online relationships with your visitors.
Like the all-important first date, a website makes a critical initial impression and speaks volumes about what you have to offer.
In order to stand out and captivate your audience, a website needs to have that certain je ne sais quoi. After all, you may only have a matter of seconds before your prospect is whisked away by another potential suitor online.
Before you even put yourself out there, you'll need to properly prepare. A new design strategy, entourage and action plan will help you strut your stuff and have a polished site that truly connects with your visitors.
Know where you want the relationship to go
No matter how big or small, all projects benefit from a strategy. The same is true for the web. Your design strategy for captivating visitors needs to go beyond the basics of colors and layout. A full user experience strategy should be a blueprint that maps out your different customer engagement points and is custom tailored to your visitors' needs. Just as you wouldn't take a vegetarian to a steak house, you need to give your online visitors the same level of thought and attention.
Here are some helpful tidbits to jot down to get that user experience strategy discussion off and running:
- Review similar sites online and determine what will make you different and unique
- Reach out to your target audience and listen to what they want (one on one interviews or surveys will work)
- Develop personas of different visitor types
- Write down all of the different ways a user can engage with you online. Then map them to the different visitor types.
- Watch what visitors actually do online using web analytics. Sometimes actions speak louder than words.
- Look at all the areas you make a first impression (homepage, landing page, e-mail). Are they compelling and appropriate to your visitor?
- Determine what your end goal is for the relationship. Does it match your visitor's goal? Work to get them into alignment.
Find out what gets your heart racing
Energetic intellect seeks tall, dark and handsome. Identify what makes you hot and what leaves you cold. Check out ideas and executions created by peers, heroes and competitors. Start analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of those existing designs and think how they relate to your own visitors.
Use this research as a starting point, but work to brainstorm new ways to delight your visitors. A little extra flair can go a long way when trying to make a first impression. We'll be covering some of these ideas in the future love potions.
Enlist the help of your entourage
Your interactive team should be by your side from the beginning. Their expertise and insight is like having a professional Romeo show you how to create a website visitors can't resist. It's critical the team fully understands the user goals and overall strategy you've cooked up. It may be necessary to add some specialized skills to the group. For example, don't underestimate the power of a good copywriter in crafting the right message to captivate visitors online.
Like writing a personal ad, finding the right words to describe your website can get your designer off to the right start. Offer up words that describe the experience you are trying to create. What emotional response do you want to invoke? Descriptive words can help designers with the initial inspiration and can help keep the design in alignment with your overall strategy.
Take the website out for a test drive
With a rich strategy and newfound camaraderie with your interactive team, your site will soon be ready to turn heads. It's time to put yourself out there, so don't be shy. You won't get the attention you deserve or keep your visitor's eye.
An advantage of the web is the ability to have many first dates in a short period of time. Before you try to woo everyone at once, try testing your approach on a smaller group of visitors. Test out a simple landing page or small campaign to see how effective you can be on a small scale. See what works and make small changes before offering it up to all of your visitors.
Stay tuned for our next love potion which will explore how to charm your visitor once they've been captivated.