This article is going to focus more on what all online businesses can do to look more professional. It came to mind when looking at an article on The Bookshop Blog and I noticed one of the authors had a gmail account.
Whatever you do whether online or offline you need to be considering your overall image. All of these things need to be in accordance.. Do not limit yourself to the look of your website or your logo but also look at the fonts you use, your policies and how you interact with people both online and offline, ensure the language you use fits this same theme.. Having an email address that has your url in it looks far more professional than having a gmail or hotmail account.
I’ll take my business as an example. The colours in my logo all match up with the colours in my website, I actually took a lot of time to ensure this was correct by looking at my logo in a graphics programme, picking out the html code for the colours and then searching through my css file to make all the changes. That took quite some time as I first did it without reference to the html code and had to repeat it when I knew what I was doing, but when I got the colours right it was much easier on the eyes.
Contact details should be easy to find and there should be more than one method of contact. My email addresses are all website addresses, they are not gmail or hotmail or something else generic. They make me look professional and easy to contact. I also ensure I have a phone number there so people can ring me should they choose this option. I did have one customer who was fairly new to internet shopping and she choose to ring me and do everything over the phone rather than go through my checkout procedures. She was very nervous and if I hadn’t had a phone number I would have lost that sale. I’ve had other customers ring me to check if I had the book available and have been able to make sales that way as well.
Your domain name should be easy to remember or have your keywords within it or both. I chose my domain name without thought to either of those things so I’m behind the eight ball there. It’s neither memorable (unless you know me well and even then people forget how to spell it) nor does it have keywords to make it easier for Google. I have a new domain name in progress and while it’s great for keywords, it’s neither short nor easily memorable so I’m very sheepish with both of those.
