No second chance to make a first impression

Guest Blogger: Erin Polka, Project Analyst, iPerceptions

After 25 years of living in the comfort of my parents’ home, I decided to take the proverbial leap and move out on my own. Since I had little more than a mattress and television to my name, the first order of business was outfitting my new place. Sofa, kitchen table, chairs, bedroom set, desk, lamps – you name it – I needed it. Whereas 10, maybe even 5 years ago, my first stop would have been to visit the stores themselves, the first place I headed was the Internet. In this day and age, any brick-and-mortar store worth one’s time has an online presence and I counted on this as I began my search.

With the amount of sites I was visiting, it quickly became clear which companies had invested time, money and research into their websites. Without naming names, a certain Swedish company did a great job of presenting their products in a clean, well-organized manner. Navigating around the site was simple and straightforward, and the content was comprehensive. There was no need to hunt for pictures, prices or product information. All in all, a very satisfying experience.

Some of the other sites, however, would have received a failing grade from my perspective. I found everything from cluttered sites where the sheer volume of information they tried to pack into one page was overwhelming, to sites where there weren’t any prices listed – extremely frustrating for someone on a budget. Sometimes the pictures were so small that important details weren’t visible, and this was often compounded by a lack of product descriptions. Dead or broken links was a common problem and inevitably shortened my stay.

Without making a conscious decision to filter stores on the basis of their site, I realized that my online experience had a major impact on my perceptions of the store as well as whether or not I bothered to make the trip in real life. Occasionally a good product would trump a bad site, but even so, my impression of the company’s website would linger.

As an Analyst at iPerceptions, I’m not sure why this struck me as unusual. When I look at survey results, visitors’ site experience has a huge effect on perceptions of the store/brand and on visitors’ propensity to take the next steps – why would my experience be any different?

Whether or not there is truth to these site-store assumptions I’ve made is another story. The bottom line is that a good site is more likely to get me to the store and as a result, more likely to see me shell out any dough. So if you see my house chock full of Swedish brand names you can’t pronounce, don’t be too surprised.