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Whether it’s chatting with a recruiter on an initial phone screen or meeting a person you connected with on a dating app in person for the first time—we all know first impressions matter. Not only do we only have the opportunity to make a first impression just once, but when we do it happens faster than we can even imagine! It takes humans just 33 to 100 milliseconds to form an opinion about another person, so when it comes to the aforementioned job interview and first date, the stakes are very high.
While we normally associate first impressions with meeting other people, this same phenomenon occurs when consumers meet your brand for the first time. And, because your website is one of the first places people come to learn about your brand, you better believe it’s imperative to implement strategies and tools that will facilitate a great first impression.
Keep reading to learn about three tips for leaving a great first impression on your site visitors.
Eliminate Flicker
Flicker refers to when a webpage loads in one state and then quickly transitions to show a different website experience—typically a dynamic variation with personalized elements. While this may seem like a somewhat innocuous side effect of website personalization, it can have lasting effects on your conversion rates. In fact, in a recent study, Walmart found that for every one second of improvement in regards to their page load time they increased their conversions by two percent.
In addition to the conversion-related benefits of eliminating flicker, we can’t ignore the creepiness factor. That’s right—seeing a page go from generic to highly personalized in a matter of seconds feels creepy, a reaction you definitely don’t want to elicit from visitors the first time they see your site. That’s why it's critical to invest in a personalization tool that has the ability to eliminate flicker altogether thereby improving conversion rates and giving you the foundation to create a great first impression every time.
Focus on Customer Experience (CX)
When it comes to creating a great first impression with visitors you need to focus on CX. Once a nice-to-have, a great CX is now table stakes as customers with positive experiences tend to spend 140% more with a given brand. While CX touches all parts of a business, when it comes to marketing, CX revolves around creating a frictionless brand experience through 1:1 personalization.
Creating segments based upon loose assumptions about how different consumers might respond to your brand is no longer enough, as consumers have become increasingly more attuned to when and how they are being targeted. Like the creepiness factor associated with flicker, seeing a website that is personalized for a segment that a brand believes you are a part of but you are not feels creepy! A poorly targeted website experience begs the question “what about my online behaviors led this brand to believe I would respond positively to this variation?” — a question you definitely don’t want visitors to be asking the first time they interact with your brand.
In order to avoid this, consider investing in a tool that enables 1:1 personalization through machine learning. In using real data to create a unique website experience for each visitor you will be able to avoid the pitfalls of segments and lookalike audiences based on shaky assumptions. Creepiness factor, gone!
Personalization for Anonymous Visitors
Let’s take the previous section one step further— when it comes to 1:1 personalization you need to personalize your site for 100% of visitors, even the anonymous ones. That’s right, when an anonymous visitor comes to your website you’ll need to give them a tailored experience from the very start!
Fortunately, machine learning powered personalization can help you do just that by serving up unique site variations based on contextual data. Leveraging data points like the time of day a visitor comes to your site or their location can allow you to serve the best variation of your site to a given visitor, allowing you to not only delight them with personalization but better optimize your site for conversions—win-win!
We all know the defeat of a job interview gone wrong and the heartbreak of getting ghosted after a first date. And, while there’s no shortage of listicles and self-help books out there to help you avoid this fate, when it comes to making a great first impression on prospective customers the answer is simple: seamless 1:1 personalization.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Intellimize can enable you to make great first impressions on your site visitors, book a demo today!
