You’re probably thinking to yourself; “of course I do, I’m an astute business person and I take great pride in making sure people get an initial positive impression of my company”. Well the fact is thousands of people every day just give away a great opportunity to present a strong first impression when people go looking for their companies on the internet. Read More on making a good Internet Impression
People use search engines for all sorts of things and one of them is finding specific companies they are looking for. If they want to find the web site of a company but don’t know the exact domain name the first thing they do is go to Google and search that company name. Even when they do know the domain, many people find it easier to just type the name into Google, in fact one of the most popular words searched for in google is "Yahoo". That sounds straight forward enough and invariably right away they find the company they are looking for. Well the next question for you to think about is what exactly do they see, what’s their “impression” of your company now that they have found it.
Here are two very distinct examples of a company that’s giving off a great impression and one that is giving off a weak impression.
If you search the word gemline in Google you will see this result;
1. Gemline - Set Your Brand in Motion
Gemline's Promotional Products - Set Your Brand in Motion.
www.gemline.com/ - 17k - Cached - Similar pages
Tote Bags
Products
Padfolios
Sport/Travel Bags
Eco-Choice
Coolers
Backpacks
Closeouts
More results from gemline.com
Here you see a beautiful well laid out display of this company's web site complete with the desirable site links Google gives to those that properly ask.
Now just to prove that this situation has nothing to do with size, or money (this is free!) Gemline according to the 2008 ASI top 40 suppliers list had annual sales of 94 million in 2007. The company Ash City during that same time had annual sales of 135 million.
If you just happened to be a person who wanted to learn more about Ash City and searched for their site in Google, this is what you would see;
1. AshCity.com Men and Women's Corporate, Casual & Custom Apparel
Username: Password: Remember Me: Uncheck if on a public computer. I forgot my password. ©Ash City eShop, 2005-2006. All rights reserved.
www.ashcity.com/ - 8k - Cached - Similar pages
2. AshCity.com Men and Women's Corporate, Casual & Custom Apparel
Welcome to Ash City | Home ... ©Ash City eShop, 2005-2006. All rights reserved. Terms and Conditions | Privacy Policy | Contact Us | Francais | Espanol.
www.ashcity.com/Home_CA.aspx - 45k - Cached - Similar pages
Now its very clear to us, which presentation we would rather have when a person came inquiring about our company. The Gemline site gives an impression of an organized well laid out web site. The visitor can click to the home page, individual sections that may be exactly where they want to go, or can click on “More results from Gemline.com" and be given every page within that site.
The Ash city experience is one of confusion, duplicate home pages, and frankly something that clearly does not seem to be under their control. Your presented with words like, “uncheck if on a public computer”, “user name; password; remember me”, “I forgot my password” in stead of terms that describe the goods and products they have to offer. The presentation of these two sites could not be more different.
The crime of this situation is that it is so easy to accomplish and costs absolutely nothing to present your company the way Gemline does. So, go to Google and search for your company name, and discover what kind of impression you’re making.
