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You are here: Home / Archives for e-mail address

How to Make a Great First Impression With Your Company Website

Last Updated: March 16, 2016

First impressions are everything. And if you’re a business owner, you want to be sure you’re making the best impression possible on your desired customers.
Most business owners already take steps to ensure this. You give your employees professional uniforms, make your storefront clean and appealing, and conduct yourself in a friendly, personable manner.
However, few business owners realize that first impressions happen before you even meet the customer. That’s because they happen online. From the moment prospective customers discover your company website in a search, they begin forming opinions. Do you appear professional? Do you seem like an expert in your field? Do you relate to your customers? Any visitor to your website will be asking these questions in their minds, whether they’re aware of it or not. It’s your job to answer these questions before they’re even asked.
So, how well are you representing your business online? What kind of first impression are you giving your customers?
In this post, we’ll give you tips on how to improve your company website so it represents your business in the most flattering light possible.

Make Your Products and Services 100% Clear

Have you ever visited a website and left after a minute because you couldn’t quite figure out what that business was offering? It happens all too often. So, to be safe, make your company’s products and/or services 100% clear. List every service in plain, simple terms.
Leave no room for doubt.
Even if you offer lots of different services in different categories, don’t be vague about it. Cover everything. Your site’s visitors should know within seconds what type of business you are and, more importantly, what you can offer them.

Choose Simplicity Over Razzle-Dazzle

Remember: Less is more. Don’t overflow your company website with bells and whistles. Don’t auto-play music upon entering the site. Don’t have Flash graphics. Don’t use hard-to-read fonts or blinding, neon colors. All of these elements run the risk of overwhelming your site’s visitors and turning them away.

Showcase Your Expertise

Prove you’re knowledgeable, reliable, and experienced. Discuss your training, industry-specific licenses (if applicable), and any other qualifications that make you an ideal choice for your prospective customer.

Match Your Image to Your Desired Customers

If you offer manual services like paving, appliance repairs, plumbing, electrical, and so on, then you probably work with a wide range of customers. In that case, it’s best to keep your website right in the middle of the road in terms of design. Don’t make it too primitive, or prospective customers won’t take you seriously. But don’t make it too chic, either, or they’ll think you’re too expensive. Think Goldilocks.
On the other hand, if you work in a high-paying field, like tax resolution or IT consulting, then it’s a good idea to demonstrate your professionalism with a sophisticated, elegant website design. Prospective customers will perceive your value through your website, so take this opportunity to show (not tell) how much your services are worth.

Use a Professional E-Mail Address

Last but not least: your e-mail address. To be clear, we don’t recommend displaying your e-mail address in plain text on your site. This sets you up for mountains of spam e-mails from bots. Instead, we recommend having a contact form for visitors to fill out.
However, just because you aren’t displaying your e-mail address doesn’t mean you don’t need to worry about how it looks! After your prospects have e-mailed you, you don’t want them to see a response from an unprofessional e-mail address. This could seriously lower their opinion of your business.
For this reason, an e-mail address at a corporate domain is ideal. A corporate domain makes you look like an established, successful business. At the same time, though, it’s not realistic to expect every single business to have access to a corporate domain. So, at the very least, you should have a company address from Gmail or Yahoo. These addresses are free and they look way more professional than your 15-year-old AOL address.
Read more about company e-mail addresses in our previous post, “Why You Should Give Your E-Mail Address a Makeover.”

Understand What’s Attractive—and What’s Not

Overall, many business owners misunderstand what’s “attractive” to the average consumer. It’s not about having the flashiest or most elaborate website design. Instead, it’s about having clear content that will make a prospective customer want to hire you. After all, you don’t make money from people spending time on your site. You make money from people who ultimately decide to call you and hire you. And quality content, not those flashy, “gee-whiz” features, is what drives people to call you.
Ensure your site has quality content by knowing who your desired customers are. Know what they’re looking for and what you can offer them. Then, present this to them through your company website. You only get one chance to make a first impression, so make it count.
 

Why You Should Give Your Company E-Mail Address a Makeover

Last Updated: December 17, 2015

Is an unprofessional e-mail address holding you back?
It’s a common refrain for job seekers, as unprofessional e-mail addresses on resumes can make prospective employers think twice about hiring them. But did you know that it can have the same effect on prospective customers seeking local service providers? An unprofessional e-mail address might convince them not to do business with you.
At the same time, Google has rolled out new procedures for claiming business listings that require business owners to have e-mail addresses with corporate domains. Without one, the process is much more time-consuming and complicated.
That means a professional e-mail address won’t just help you attract new customers—it will also streamline your online advertising efforts with Google. You might not have given your e-mail address much thought up until now, but it could make a world of difference for your business.

Have an Easier Time Dealing With Google

First, let’s discuss the new Google policies that make this upgrade a little more urgent.
Google has changed how they let you claim a listing. It used to be that when you had an advertiser trying to claim a listing on your behalf, Google would automatically call you for verification. Now, however, Google requests verification from you (the business owner) via e-mail (unless otherwise prompted by a phone call from your advertiser). But it can’t just be any e-mail: Google needs to receive an e-mail stating that you authorize “X” company to manage your listing, and this e-mail must come from an address on a corporate domain. 

What’s a Corporate Domain Anyway?

What do we mean by “corporate domain”? Well, a domain is what a user types into their browser in order to visit a specific website. It usually ends with “.com,” “.gov,” “.org,” “.net,” etc. So, a corporate domain is a domain that contains a given business’s name. For example, Bob’s Appliance’s corporate domain would be “bobsappliance.com” or something similar.
Thus, Google would want to see an e-mail from “bob@bobsappliance.com” when authorizing a third party to claim and/or manage that company’s listing. This is a way for Google to safeguard against spam: An e-mail from a corporate domain proves that an actual owner or employee of the business is the one e-mailing them.
It’s not impossible to claim a listing or transition management without a corporate domain, but it’s a longer and more convoluted process involving a lot of back-and-forth phone calls. You’ll have a much faster resolution with Google if you can simply e-mail them from a business domain. This is an especially important point if you’re switching or planning on switching SEO providers.

What to Do:

  • Set up at least one e-mail address on your domain that you can send e-mails from to prove that it’s you when you’re claiming or verifying your listing. Google wants to talk to you and wants to know that it’s you.
  • Always maintain ownership of your listing and just make your advertiser the manager. This way, Google will always know that you’re the verified owner.

Don’t have your own corporate domain? Not sure how to get one? Talk to your advertiser. Most advertisers will be able to provide you with one; if not, they’ll be able to point you toward the correct resources. Either way, you’ll need to coordinate with your advertiser before creating a new domain. And if your advertiser has already built and optimized a website for you (like Prospect Genius’s LeadTrax™ sites), you can still register your own domain and have your advertiser connect the two.
If you’re doing it all yourself, here’s a good place to start. 

Make Yourself More Attractive to Customers

Now let’s look at this from a marketing standpoint.
Pretend you’re a local homeowner looking to hire an appliance repairman to fix your fridge. When presented with these two e-mail addresses, which one would you choose to contact for the job?

  • BobbyB5287@aol.com
  • bob@bobsappliance.com

Most homeowners would choose the second one, as it appears much more legitimate. Even if it’s only a one-man operation, an e-mail address from “bobsappliance.com” makes the business look much bigger. That’s what prospective customers want to see.

Legitimize Your Business

Whether it’s Google or prospective customers, people like seeing a professional e-mail address. It makes your business look more legitimate, which is helpful for resolving issues with your Google listing and marketing yourself online. Your business’s success will only increase when you upgrade your e-mail address with a corporate domain, so take action now.
In the mood for a laugh? Check out The Oatmeal’s comic, “What your email address says about your computer skills.”

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