There’s a pretty much limitless roster ofweb presentersout there to choose from – which means of course that somewhere is the perfect host for your product or service. But how do you choose the ideal face of your company online?
In a sense, the design and branding of your site should have you halfway there already. The purpose of a website is to do more than simply provide an online location where your company is “found” – it’s a shop window that displays the whole brand ethos and values of your business. That means visually as well as in terms of the tone of your content and information.
Theweb presentersthat fit the online environment you have created, then, are the ones who are right for the job. The following example is a little overblown but it serves to illustrate the point well. If you have a site design that looks very professional, understated, even bespoke, and you are an estate agency, then havingweb presentersdressed as clowns is clearly the wrong thing to do. But if you’re a children’s party company with a big colourful website, then having clowns as your web presenters is exactly therightthing to do.
So what about our hypothetical estate agency then? If you’re going to use a presenter to help your site visitor around a minimalist, bespoke looking site, you are much better served picking a presenter dressed in understated business costume, probably with a highly professional attitude – the same kind of person, in other words, that you would expect to find in person at a high street branch of an independent estate agency.
Theweb presentersyou choose can be subtly graded in terms of universality – accent or no accent, for example – and appearance: either to make your target audience feel specifically included by them or to appeal to the widest possible audience. Again returning to our estate agency – while fewer people have the money to patronise a bespoke estate agency it’s clear than many people buy houses, so the potential target market is wider than, say, a site aimed at street-savvy teens. In the latter example, idealweb presenterswill express themselves in a manner more familiar to a smaller group of people – and will be dressed fashionably and casually.
If you don’t know what your brand’s target audience is, it is very hard for you to develop an idea of the rightweb presentersfor your site. Make sure you have branded yourself before you get into web presentations.
