Amanda Williams (pictured below) is the founder and CEO of Yellow Panda, a Gold Coast based public relations and content agency auditing brands’ online assets, websites, and social media. In this guest post for B&T, Williams gives her tips for making a killer first impression online…

When it comes to your brand’s first impression online, research shows that you have mere seconds – seven, to be precise – to make it a good one.

In the digital age, for any business, the perception that potential clients have of you and your business often boils down to one thing – the first impression that you make with them online.

Sure, none of us like to admit to judging a book by its cover, but the reality is that if you don’t make a great first impression within seconds of the customer clicking onto your website or social media pages, it’s as good as game over.

No pressure or anything.

But don’t worry! With a few simple tweaks, you can be well on your way to creating a memorable online first impression that is guaranteed to convert potential customers into current clients.

Here are my top three pet peeves when it comes to online first impressions, and how to fix them.

1. Poor website design

Did you know that in a recent research study, 75 per cent of customers said that website design was one of the biggest influences on their perception of a brand. In fact, many viewers to websites will leave within the first fifteen seconds, so it’s critical that you make yours the exception.

Some of the biggest offences reported by internet users include autoplay videos and background music, excessive pop-up or sidebar ads, poor graphic design or the exclusive use of stock photos, outdated or poorly worded content, broken links, or poor readability as a result of an inappropriate font size, text or background colour.

How many of these is your site guilty of? Instead, opt for a clean, professional, and easy-to-navigate website design that still retains your company’s branding and style.

2. A lack of optimisation for mobile devices

Media measurement and analytics company Comscore recently revealed that mobile device users have actually overtaken desktop users when it comes to the number of users surfing the web at any one time. Like it or not, more than half of all online traffic now comes from tablets and smartphones, meaning that if your site isn’t optimised for mobile devices, you could be missing out.

By optimising your site for mobile devices, you can be sure that your website design will display properly with full clickability and interactivity; your photos, videos, and text posts will remain accessible; and your page will load significantly faster than it did pre-optimisation.

3. Poor navigability

Your website design and optimisation for mobile can both be fantastic, but if your users can’t navigate your site, your efforts will be in vain. It’s important to make sure that your potential customers can locate all the information that they need at a drop of a hat, or they’ll simply go elsewhere.

With some of the biggest complaints by internet users being sites with a lack of navigation aids or poor site structure, it’s important that your site is designed with user experience at the forefront of your mind.

Use search bars, buttons, site maps, and navigation drop downs to help your customers find what they are looking for.