Personality: The Ability To Distinguish You From The Competition
Every business has a personality, an image, an identity that is the sum total of every experience anyone who has ever had contact with your company has ever had. Success online and offline depends on how well you manage that personality.
Your website is part of your public face and in many cases it is your only public face. Your business is not what you sell and it is not you, it is a separate and distinct entity that needs to be treated like a precocious child in need of care and feeding, and development.
Personality starts with a point-of-view and an attitude strong enough to make an impact. And the more mundane your offering, the more important it is to make a statement. Victoria’s Secret has little trouble grabbing people’s attention, but if it’s sandpaper you sell, you better try harder. We especially see this identity crisis with distributors, whose own personality often gets sublimated to the major brands they carry.
Perhaps you remember the J. Peterman character from the old Seinfeld television show. The character was played by, actor and voice-over specialist, John O’Hurley, who is nothing like the real J. Peterman. But the characterization was so strong, and so memorable, that O’Hurley was able to single-handedly rescue the company from financial trouble.
If you’re looking to create a Web-personality as effective as John O’Hurley’s J. Peterman, you should consider adding a blog or photo gallery to your Web-presentation, one that engages your audience’s attention and captures their collective imagination.
At the end of the day there is one thing about websites that should guide you in your decisions as to what you present and how, and that is simply, websites are for people not search engines. If the people coming to your website don’t hear what you have to say, understand what you’re offering, and remember who you are, then your website isn’t doing what it needs to do for your business.
