How Important is Your Web Logo?
Will You Get the Second Date or the Second Click or the Sale?
You can listen to the archived version of this show at:
I also chat with Sam from IWW, Irish Whip Wrestling and use his logo as an example.
Being in the Marketing business, I hear all the time things like, my web site is not worth the money or time that I put into it and I don’t believe I have made one sale because of it. As a matter of fact some estimates have found the majority of small-business Web sites fail to generate revenue.
What a sad mistake on the part of entrepreneurs and business owners. Most entrepreneurs seem to make the mistake of blaming their unproductive website’s performance on the site itself or even on the medium of the web in general. . The problem, more than likely not the site, not its design and sometimes not even it’s content—it's the lack of trust in the company behind the site. Most of us found ourselves in Marketing 101 wondering what trust is and why Building trust is important. Building trust via your Web site is essential. Why? In most cases in this informtion driven world, your web site is all inquiring minds experience before they make the decision to buy or not to buy or to do business or not to do business. Now for the reason for this particular topic: How do we build trust for a web site?
One way to build trust is through something right under your nose, and I mean that literally—your corporate logo. Bill Haig has written a book on corporate logos. The title is as long as his academic pedigree. The title is: How and Why Credibility-based Logos are Effective in Marketing Communication in Persuading Customers to Take Action: A Multiple Case Study Toward a Better Understanding of Creativity in Branding.) His premise and argument for it is this:” Used on a Web site, a company's logo can increase (or decrease) conversion rates at first glance.”
As I have alluded earlier, “At first glance” is more important than you think. We're talking about a high-stakes game that's over in an instant. The web is now the super bowl of marketing. There are no timeouts to regroup and certainly no “instant replays.” First time users either “get it” from the logo or they leave Recent Research by Google Ad Words finds that you have about 8 seconds to create enough of an impression for the guest to move on in your site and click further. This means that your logo needs to speak credibly and unforgettable that you have one major characteristic on your side: Credibility. In his book Bill Haig explains unqualifiedly that a logo that conveys credibility will increase conversion rates from lurkers or browsers to customers over four times compared to those that consumers do not consider credible.
This web logo thing is as unconscious as the attitude of a woman who meets a man for the first time who is not a construction worker whose shoes look like he is or a man who shies away from a woman with cracked and unfilled nails even though he will tell you manicures mean nothing to him. These are unconscious mechanisms at play in the mind upon first meeting of a person just as well as upon first glance at a web site. This first glance, very much like that first meeting between a man and a woman when they determine if there is chemistry or not is the Web turn-on or Web turn off point in the visitors click through relationship with you.
How? Well, in this first date metaphor boils down to this elemental characteristic of credibility. Credibility can very neatly be categorized by two traits: expertise and trustworthiness. For instance in the case of a house painting business both the expertise and trustworthiness, Bill Haig says; this can all be expressed as a paint brush shaped like a house. The idea of a logo is to communicate nonverbally, with a clean, contemporary style that suggests such credibility and trustworthiness tenets such as desirable efficiency and on-time execution.
If your website is not thriving, like any good mechanic who is trying to fix a car will tell you, look to the cheapest thing first. Check out your web logo, your corporate logo. What does it say about you? Doest it speak of credibility with the stellar traits of expertise and trustworthiness?
Ask a few friends, put a survey up or a poll, or ask a prospective client or a current one. Whatever you do, do it quickly. The speed at which you do this will determine the status of many of your second web dates or even getting past the first introduction without even a perfunctory, “Excuse me I have a meeting with another web site.” The most you will get is a “turn off” faster than a light switch by a “click out.”
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© Joanne Quinn-Smith, Monday Morning Marketeer 412-628-5048
Listen at: http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/tscmd/tc/33960
Blog: www.marketingmondaymorning.blogspot.com
