When a visitor first arrives on your website, they want to know three basic things (sometimes known as “the grunt test“):
- What do you offer?
- How will it make my life better?
- What do I need to do to buy it?
Something that isn’t on that initial list? The age of your company. That information may be important, and may eventually help to make the sale, but it’s way premature to lead with that — it’s like proposing on the first date.
I saw two examples of this with local sites today. One included “we have been in business in the Atlanta area for more than 100 years” in the very first sentence on their site, and another lead off their second sentence with “Since 1977, they have provided…“.
That can be great information for someone to have, but it’s not a good place to start. State the problem your visitors have, explain how you can solve it, and them know how great life will be if they take up your offering.
If they want to dig in more, let them explore your site and learn more about you — and then your 100 years of experience might be a more impressive piece for them to learn.
