Your Visitors Want You To Succeed

When a person first comes to your web pages, they absolutely want your pages to be the best they could ever visit. They give you every benefit of the doubt. Why else would they have come to your page?

But they are not going to give you a lot of time if you disappoint them early.

When I was in college I made some extra money playing guitar at coffeehouses and bars. I learned that when I first got up on stage every one in the audience was hoping I was going to be the best singer/songwriter they had ever seen. And until I played my first note or sang my first song, they believed that was going to be true.

I learned that if I believed this also, they would believe it longer. If I acted like I knew what I was doing, if I told the audience through my actions that I was what they wanted me to be, I discovered most of them would believe me. After all, that was what they wanted to believe. 

This is an important lesson for your web pages. While it is probably impossible to be the very best experience any one online has ever had, it is possible not to make mistakes that will make it a bad experience.

Think carefully about why people come to your web page. What is it they are hoping for? Can you give it to them?

What is it that would make visitors leave? Try hard not to do that.

I have been told that the main purpose of the first words on any web page are to get the visitor to read the next words. The the main purpose of the next words are to get the visitor to read the words after that.

Take the opportunity your visitors give you when they first come to your pages. They want you to succeed. Show confidence. Show understanding of why the person is on your page. Figure out how to do what they want.