London, UK
Many of you will have visited the website of the Internet Psychologist Graham Jones. He very kindly offered to write this guest blog.
Your website is a massive cold call
By Graham Jones
Internet Psychologist
When they are done well, cold calls work. After all, there wouldn’t be a multi-million pound telesales industry if phone-based selling didn’t work. In spite of what people might say down the pub about ignoring sales calls, enough people do engage with them – otherwise companies would stop doing them….!
The problem, of course, is that many sales calls are poorly executed – and they give the whole industry a bad name. First impressions do count; saying things like “this is not a sales call” and then proceeding to sell something doesn’t win them friends. Neither does a vocal performance that sounds like a canary down a mineshaft. You know, that you decide within a second or two whether or not you like the stranger at the other end of the line. You don’t go into “analytical mode” and try to work out their height, their age, their educational attainment and their motivation. True, you could try to make some calculations of this nature – but largely you make your mind up, within a second or two, whether or not to continue with the call. Often your mind is made up before you even know what they are calling about.
Well, the same is true online. Research shows that you make your mind up about a website almost instantaneously. In fact, within a second of the page having fully loaded, you have decided whether to stay or go. People often don’t even read a single word of a web page article before they’ve made their mind up to depart. Just like the cold call on the telephone, your website is making a massive cold call to a set of strangers who make their mind up whether or not to carry on with your web page in a second or two.
In other words, if you own a website, you can’t underestimate the importance of first impressions.
Design, has an impact, but not as big as the overall colour. Take, for instance, a gardening website. What colour would you expect it to be? Green perhaps? Take a look at a range of gardening websites and you’ll see the predominant colour is indeed green – because that’s the colour we associate with gardening. But ask a web designer and they may well say: “Gosh, every other gardening site is in green, why not use pink and grey to really stand out as different.” The problem is, within a fraction of a second, your “cold call” appears to be from someone selling Barbie dolls, rather than from a gardener. People don’t hang around to see what lies behind the colour – they’re off if it doesn’t match their expectation.
Equally, what’s the most common headline on a website do you reckon? Probably “Welcome to our website” (173m results on Google…!). How many times are you actually looking for a website that says “Welcome to our website”? That’s the equivalent of “this is not a sales call”. If you were looking for a gardening website you might want to see a headline that says: “Grass cutting services in High Wycombe”, for instance.
Studies show that the second thing people look for on a website, after the colour, is a headline that has the words they want to see. In a cold call, the recipient simply wants to know – in that few seconds grace for a first impression – is the caller nice and do they have something of interest (the headline). It’s the same with your website. In just a second or two, your website needs to convey that it is “right” for the viewer and that it has just what they want at that moment in time. Fail to do that and the visitor will click away – in just the same way as an unwanted cold call leads to the click of the phone being put down. Don’t let your website get ignored; if you appreciate it is just like a cold call, you can produce something that is inviting and attractive. But if you approach it as though “this is not a sales call” you will inevitably lose out.
Graham Jones helps businesses succeed online using psychological techniques. He provides consultancy, advice and mentoring to help companies improve their sales and marketing via the Internet. You can find out more at: http://www.grahamjones.co.uk. He is the author of Effective Email (http://www.effective-email.co.uk) which helps you ensure you have an efficient and effective email system which avoids time-wasting.
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For as long as I can remember, one has been continually being told to “be positive” or asked if your glass is half-full or half-empty. In sales, one is expected to be upbeat and positive 100% of the time, “even when your asleep” some under-developed sales manager told me once. Naturally, one mustn’t be negative or sullen-faced when handling customers or prospects but I haven’t met a single person yet who’s positive all the time. A friend and former business colleague, who retired at 53, used to say “if you can get things right 51% of the time or better, you’ll be in good shape”. Sound advice I suggest and something I’ll be referring to tomorrow when speaking at a conference on presentation skills, public-speaking and 
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