Have you ever listened to someone talking about a new company or person they discovered online? “Their website is great! It looks really sharp and everything was easy to find. You can tell they really know what they’re doing.” That person made a value judgement about that organization or individual based largely on a superficial impression.

Of course, you are much more then what your website looks like or how it works, right? Well, not really, at least not to people who find you on the web. For the people discovering you online, your website is the only measure they have to judge you by. This point seems obvious, and yet many professional outfits seem to keep their website as a low priority concern, and that’s a mistake.

If you’re a professional, and you’re expecting people to give you money for whatever it is that you do, then your website needs to give the impression of someone who’s serious about what they do. If your site looks like you didn’t put much work or money into it, people just aren’t going to take you as seriously. If you don’t seem to care about what you’re showing your audience, what motivation do they have to be interested in you?

If your website looks like you didn’t spend any money on it, people will likely assume that you’re not successful enough to afford a real website, and that’s going to inform their overall impression of you or your organization. You’re only going to be taken as seriously as you appear to take yourself. Take some time to look at your website critically, from a new visitor’s point of view, and see if you’re giving the impression you really want to.

- Jimi King