People judge your book by the cover

It's difficult to get high rankings on search engines. It's a lot of work and it takes some time until people can find your site for search terms that are relevant to your business.

When people find your web site through search engines, you must keep them on your site and you must convince them. A new study that was recently published in the journal "Behaviour and Information Technology" shows how important it is to make a good first impression.

The first impression is very important

A new study that has recently been published in the journal Behaviour and Information Technology shows that the snap decisions Internet users make about the quality of a web page have a lasting impact on their opinions.

It is very important that your web pages look good and that they have a trustworthy design.

You have 50 milliseconds

The study was conducted by Dr. Gitte Lindgaard of Carleton University in Ottawa. Lindgaard and her colleagues showed volunteers briefest glimpses of web pages previously rated as being either easy on the eye or particularly jarring, and asked them to rate the websites on a sliding scale of visual appeal.

Although the images were shown for just 50 milliseconds, the ratings were very similar to the judgments made after a longer examination of a web site.

Psychologists call this the halo effect. If people continue to use a web site that gave a good first impression they "prove" to themselves that they made a good initial decision.

What does this mean to your web site?

It's crucial that your site makes a good first impression. Otherwise, people might go to the next web site in the search results before finding out that you have great offers.

Make your web pages easy to read. Use a clear web site design and make it easy to find out what your web site is about.

Don't put everything you can on a single page. Focus on a clear message and tell your web site visitors what's in it for them when they visit your site.

Making a good first impression can be the determining factor for the success of your web site. If you're sure that your web pages don't deter web surfers, you can optimize them for top 10 rankings on Google, Yahoo and other important search engines.

How to add credibility to your web site

The Stanford University compiled a list of 10 guidelines for building the credibility of a web site. These guidelines are based on three years of research and on several studies about that topic.

The Stanford list confirms the recommendations we gave in previous issues of this newsletter. Although the information in the Stanford list is not new, it is still very important if you want to be successful with your web site.

Why is credibility important?

Credibility is crucial if you want to make money with your web site. Your web site visitors must have trust in your company. It's pointless to spend a lot of work on getting visitors from search engines if these visitors don't convert to sales.

The Stanford guidelines for web credibility:

- Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site.
- Show that there's a real organization behind your site.
- Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide.
- Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site.
- Make it easy to contact you.
- Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose).
- Make your site easy to use -- and useful.
- Update your site's content often (at least show it's been reviewed recently).
- Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers).
- Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem.

What does this mean to your web site?

Make sure that your web pages are optimized for human web surfers before you start with your search engine optimization activities. Your web pages must be appealing, credible and convincing.

If done right, getting more visitors means getting more sales

When you're sure that your web pages generate sales, optimize them for high search engine rankings. Focus on people first, then on search engines.

If you have convincing web pages, getting more web site visitors means getting more sales. These web site promotion tools help you to get as many visitors as possible.

What search engines plan..?

At the recent Wharton Technology Conference in Philadelphia representatives from Google, Yahoo and MSN Search discussed the future of search technologies.

The big search engine companies have different ideas on how search engines will change over the next few years.

MSN Search wants to focus on the user interface

Saleel Sathe, the representative of MSN Search, claimed that the user interfaces of search engines required significant changes:

"Search engines have shot themselves in the foot by providing a search box, where users provide relatively little information [...]

The average search query is 2-3 words... but if you asked a librarian for information you would not just give them 2.3 words -- you would give them the opportunity to give you the rich detailed answer you want."

Google thinks that technology is more important

Google's representative Matthew Glotzbach argued that the computers should be able to find out what people want:

"In the distant future we will not be able to get you to take more action, because we will get close enough with what you give us. A lot of emphasis will continue on doing that in the background — getting the technology to figure out [what you want] [...]

Larry Page [the co-founder] of Google often says, 'the perfect search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want'."

Yahoo bets on social search technologies

Yahoo's Bradley Horowitz proposed that existing web search should be replaced with social search:

"What we think is the next major breakthrough is social search. It basically democratizes the notion of relevance and lets ordinary users decide what's important for themselves and other users."

Each method has its own problems

MSN's approach might be difficult because people are probably not willing to work more to get information. Most searchers want quick results.

Yahoo's social search approach requires the participation of web surfers. The problem is that many people might not be interested to participate and other people might abuse the system to promote their own sites.

Google faces the problem that is is difficult to find out what a web surfer actually wants when he provides only limited information. This problem could be mastered by saving the search history of web surfers etc. but that leads to other (privacy) problems.
These are interesting times for search. Only time will tell what impact future changes will have on your business. Until then, you should try to get best results with the current search engine situation.