Our Blog

Get Personal on your Website

  February 27, 2019

By Heshy Friedman

How do you plan to stand out?

This morning, while I was getting the kids ready for school and myself ready for work, I started thinking about stories. How much we love to hear a story and getting to know each other’s. I was thinking about this during the entire drive to the office.

See what I mean? I’ve just begun telling this one, and you’re already engaged.

What about the strange picture accompanying this article? Well, it’s of me, and my friend David Engel, enjoying some winter nature. It may be out of place, but it certainly captured your attention, didn’t it? A personalized picture with identifiable people doesn’t get glossed over – it gets noticed.

While at work, if we do communicate with each other at all, lately it’s always at a distance, via email, text message, WhatsApp, or through websites. There’s no personalization there! There’s plenty of information, but no connection, no humanity. It all blends together into noise. Is it any wonder that we see such rude and insensitive social interaction on the web?

This is true more than ever in today’s Web environment, where thirty percent of all websites are made in WordPress—most of them with stock templates—and it seems like the rest are all made with “drag-and-drop” tools like Wix and SquareSpace. It takes little time at all with these tools to set up a functioning website that can be indexed, will appear on search engines, and provide the visitor the functions they expect to see.

But is it going to make that human connection? Will your visitor get to know what makes you special? When it comes time for influencers and decision makers to make their choices, how will they remember your site once they’ve left it? Will it sell your business? Does it make the case for you and your product or service?

No, it’s only “as good as all the rest,” at best. It doesn’t make a unique impression and stand out from the tidal wave of information we get from the Internet today.

Well, that’s what I’m getting at. You can be in the background, like someone in the crowd at a party, or you can be the one that walks over, introduces yourself, and says, “Hello, it’s nice to meet you. My name is …” That’s the person that gets remembered. And with a little effort, your website can create that same introduction, make that personal connection.

Personalization. It’s a little more effort, but it’s well worth it! Invest in a truly customized website that reflects who you are—your tastes, your personality. Introduce yourself and your amazing team on a bio page. Use real pictures of your real staff and operations, not stock photos. Create personalized, unique copy and content, and let testimonials from real people add their voices to the story that your visitor hears.

Then that influencer or decision maker or buyer will say, “Yeah, those people. I remember them. I think we can do something great together.”

Bottom line: In a cookie-cutter, template-built Internet, personalization creates a memorable impression that drives engagement, retention, mind share, and sales.

Contact us today for more information.