Show the world what you are made of

We were pleased to see a story feature this week on V3.co.uk around how poor websites can affect businesses revenue. You may be the most professional outfit out there, your organisation may have a wonderful shop or a slick office, but if you have a below par web presence, people will think you are amateurish and may turn to your rivals.

We at Rackspace have known this for a long time, and have talked about it in previous blog posts <Efficient websites keep customers coming back for more>. It could not only cost you revenue in the short term, but could also damage your organisation’s brand in the long term. A website could be the first time a person interacts with your organisation, so a well thought out and intelligent website is just as important as your public facing staff.

When people first land on your site the layout and design will shape their lasting impression of your organisation, and if it is a bad experience they may not come back for a second view. You do not need a particularly fancy page to create a good impression, but it does have to be user friendly. It’s not just the look of the website which will influence people’s opinion of your organisation, features such as your e-commerce section also need to be easy and simple to use or this will affect the perception of your organisation.

However, even if your website has the slickest design it needs to be consistently and reliably online to create a good impression. It will have a terrible impact on your organisation if your website is unreliable, slow, unresponsive and constantly going offline. That is why it is essential to have a reliable hosting provider to keep your website up at all the times.

If you get your website right, if it’s always online and if it’s easy to navigate through, people will leave with a positive lasting impression of your organisation which will keep them coming back to your site  time and time again.