Does Your Website Have Personality?
When beginning to design a new website for consumers, or when evaluating your existing site, it is important that it has a unique quality and emotion that influences the user and reflects your brand. Giving a website a personality greatly influences decision-making on part of the user and can be a very powerful tool.
Often called Interface design, Human-Computer Interaction is where all the elements of computer science, behavioral science and design come together. They influence the user through emotion the way two people would interact. What’s interesting is that when done right, the personality of the product will override the computer’s inanimate coldness.
It is extremely important to know your audience and what makes people interested in your product. If you’re trying to sell homes, the website must be “trustworthy” and convey an openness as if they were stepping into one of your model show homes. Its true that many people with the idea of buying a new home will look online first, and your website must be invite them in, and offer them all the information that they are seeking instantly, or these “browsers” will go elsewhere.
Get involved in the design process with the web designers and make sure that they understand what really drives your customers and how your brand is important so they can bring it to life. Many times over, the designers will know how the architecture or “ bare bones” of the site should be orchestrated, to enhance a user’s experience and get them to information quickly.
Only when you are comfortable and knowledgeable of your brand’s influence on your customers, will you be able to create a powerful website full of personality that will meet people face-to-face and overall, win their trust. Its is very important to great customer service and an online sales person that will continue to embody the same brand persona and guide them to the next step of purchasing a home or product. Most importantly, if you don’t respond to them in a timely fashion, you could lose that person and bond you created online. Remember to follow up!
