Whoever said you can’t judge a book by its cover is an idiot. You might not judge that book correctly by its cover, however mark my words — you will judge that book.

People can pretend they’re not shallow, that “it’s what’s on the inside that counts”… Save me the politically correct bullshit because that’s all it is. We judge people every day — so much so that we may not even notice it. You might not say it but you do think it. In this world, first impressions count.

So how does this relate to domain development? If you had 2 seconds to look at a website and decide whether it would likely be of interest or not, what might you consider? Long load times, errors, expired digital certificates, and typos aren’t going to leave a positive impression. How about design — does it look professional or at least like a normal website? You certainly don’t want something that looks ugly and outdated. One thing I plan on doing in the near future once I have a bit more time on my hands is incorporating more images into the website — it’s certainly the cheapest and quickest way to improve the looks of a site. How about font, layout, and background color? If it has advertisements, do they blend in well or do they look spammy? Is it easy to tell at a glance what the website is about? How about your post titles and first few sentences — enticing enough to make someone want to read more?

Mark Fulton’s DotSauce really is a work of art — how much more aesthetically pleasing could a site be on first impression? Once you’ve impressed your website’s visitor enough to actually stay on your site long enough to start reading it, how do you encourage them to stay on or read more? For one thing, site navigation is important. My site’s really not a good example of good site navigation — again, take a look at Mark’s site for what a great website should look like.  Broken links and images tell visitors you don’t care about your website or at the very least don’t take very good care of it. Who are your visitors? How old are they? What are they looking for? Is your content appropriate for your visitors? Most of my site’s visitors are in the 18-30 range, so I need to keep that in mind when I write my content. Older visitors might on average have a longer attention span and hence be more likely to read a 3000 word post — it’s probably not a good idea to make a habit of writing 3000 word posts with a younger audience, however at the same time, I don’t want to scare away any older visitors with too many short posts or by having too much of a potty mouth. How do you engage your visitors? How do you convey authority? Why should your visitors listen to what you say? Do your posts provide enough value to encourage visitors to return again and again?

While first impressions are important, don’t make first impressions better at the expense of your other visitors — a flash intro might look pretty cool to a first time visitor to your website but you better have a way to skip the intro for return visitors who likely won’t want to watch it every time they come to your site.

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