Renegade Search

While in high school, one of my first jobs was working in the food court of a mall. Across the way from our shop there was a Chinese buffet restaurant where you could choose 4 items for $5.99. Nearly every day I worked in that food court, there was a fellow behind the counter of the Chinese buffet, arms crossed, with a scowl across his face. He looked as if he was trying to intimidate potential customers rather than welcome them. My friends and I affectionately nicknamed him “hard-look guy”, and even went so far as to practice our own hard looks when there were no customers of our own in sight. Over that summer, we noticed how people would tend to keep moving when hard look guy was working, often spending their money elsewhere. And sure, some people are just not in the mood for Chinese buffet. I am confident, however, that some people just keep moving when they get a “hard look”.

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With two full days of speakers and knowledge, there was much to take away from SearchLove this fall. George (@gzlatin) and I were able to visit Boston and attend the conference, so we've summarized the multitude of things that we learned and heard at the event. You'll note that the "Keep it Real" comments from the speakers are missing most of the important words as these are supposed to remain "attendee secrets" for the next 30 days.

Yes, I know this list is long (it's supposed to be), so I've summarized it into the following categories to make things easier on you. (side note: within each category, the individual items are ordered from when they were provided throughout the event)

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When shopping online, people make split second decisions that could either cost or make you large sums of money. Attempting to identify the overriding shopping habits of your demographic can be difficult. Most people do not have the time, resources, or data to assess how their average customer interacts with their site. Often, you build up the visibility of your site in the search results and the traffic starts pouring in; somehow, the revenue does not. Why? Confidence and trust. Your visitors may not have it.

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We've all heard the saying "first impressions matter", but how much do they matter on your website? Apparently a lot, according to a principle known as "The Halo Effect".

It takes the average visitor only 50 milliseconds to form their first impression of your website according to popular research.

The significance of this is not just in the amount of time you have to form your first impression, but in how big the impact the rest of that visit is to your bottom line.

The overall look and feel of your site is going to play an important role.  A positive first impression (a clean and well designed site) will make everything  following seem more favorable.  A negative first impression (a cluttered or poorly designed site) will cast a cloud on everything on your site, no matter how good it is.  People will even go as far as distrust your business if your website doesn't meet a certain standard of quality. This is known as the Halo Effect.

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Neglected. Unappreciated. Overlooked. Undervalued. Outcast. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the prototypical About Us page. And it doesn’t make any sense. I am often flabbergasted by the lack of time and effort companies put in to building, developing, and maintaining an effective About Us page. Anonymity doesn’t work online. It breeds mistrust and it kills conversions. If you are reading this and feel mildly uncomfortable because your About Us page is sub-par, that's a good thing. Keep reading.

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