Your site has 50 milliseconds to convince
A visitor lands. In the blink of an eye, they have already made up their mind about you. Within five seconds, they decide whether to stay or close the tab.
75% of people judge a company's credibility by its website. And 88% of those who have a bad first visit never come back.
A showcase site does not take orders online. Its job is simpler, and harder: within five seconds, the visitor must understand what you do, who for, and why you rather than someone else. Then take the expected step: call you, write to you, ask for a quote.
What a showcase site covers
A clear scope, built to show, reassure and trigger contact:
- The essential pages: home, who you are, your services, your references, and a contact page.
- A contact form that turns a visit into a conversation.
- A flawless mobile version and a load time under two seconds.
- Baseline SEO, so you are found on your name and your trade.
- Going live on your own domain, ready to use.
- Optional: a space to edit your own text and images, if you want to keep control of the content.
Where a showcase site stops
So every need gets the right answer:
- Selling and taking payment onlinethat is an online shop, not a showcase site.
- A client area, an account, a booking system, a databasethat is bespoke development.
- A brand to create or rebuild (logo, colours, identity)that is branding, upstream of the site.
- The right words on every pagethat is copywriting, which we build into the project.
The showcase site does one thing and does it perfectly: your first impression.
The price of being slow
The biggest brands have costed it to the penny.
Amazon
100 milliseconds of extra load time, 1% fewer sales. That is 1.6 billion dollars a year.
Walmart
one second saved, 2% more sales.
Vodafone
rendering sped up by 31%, sales up 8%.
And 53% of mobile visitors leave if a page takes more than three seconds to appear. Mobile is 60% of traffic. A beautiful site that drags is a site that loses money.
Before / after: what actually changes
Airbnb
A grid of small ads, like a directory. The visitor booked a bed.
A single search bar in the centre, "Where are you going?", and large photos of real homes. The page no longer lists rooms, it makes you want to leave.
What to take away
A homepage is one question and one button. The visitor knows what to do in a second, without thinking.
La Redoute
The thick paper catalogue, two collections a year, orders by post. A site lagging behind Amazon and Zalando. In 2013, 88 million euros of losses and a buyout for a symbolic euro by its own managers.
The catalogue dropped, everything rebuilt around the site: modern, fast, mobile-first, able to react to sales in real time.
What to take away
A dated site casts doubt on the whole company; a modern one gives it back its credibility. The result: break-even within a few years, more than a billion euros of revenue, and a buyout by Galeries Lafayette. The site did not cost money, it saved it.
Neither brand simply made things prettier. They made what they are worth obvious, in a single screen.
What we believe
At Iggy, we do not deliver pages. We make sure that within five seconds, your visitor understands who you are, believes you, and knows what to do. Three requirements, on every project: an identity that sets you apart at first glance, a site that loads in under two seconds, one clear action per page.
Your brand deserves more than a brochure online. It deserves a site that converts.Let's talk about your project
Sources: Stanford Web Credibility Project (credibility, loyalty); Amazon figure after G. Linden; Walmart Web Performance Study; Vodafone Core Web Vitals Case Study; Airbnb and La Redoute case studies.