There was a short discussion on my Private Forum the other day about the importance of having a professionally designed logo on an eCommerce website. I’ve come across this issue many times, in fact I teach about it in my Workshops. Is it important to have a professional logo on your site? Yes, absolutely. Why is it important? It gives the impression that you are a larger, more professional company. A logo is usually placed in the top left corner of a web site’s header. That’s the top left corner of the page. The header, which is usually a strip across the top of a web site that identifies what the web site does, is extremely important for establishing two things: Professionalism and legitimacy. Have you ever been shopping online and come across a site that simply has it’s name in text in the top left corner? Of course you have. Think about it. How professional does that look to you? Does it make you feel like the company is large, stable, and trustworthy? Or does it look like a cheap, quickly thrown together site owned by an individual? For most people, sseeing the site name in text at the top left of a web site simply leaves the impression that the business is small and unprofessional. That’s not good. We know that first impressions are important, right? Well, in English speaking countries (and many others, for that matter) we read from left to right, top to bottom. So, we start reading web sites at the top left corner. That top left corner is the very first impression your site page makes on people. It needs to be a good one. We have about 6 seconds to capture the short attention span that belongs to the Internet Shopper. Anything that gets in the way of making a good impression can instantly lose that short attention span and cost you potential sales. A well-designed logo at the top left of your web pages goes a very long way toward increasing your sales conversion. While your site visitors won’t dwell on the logo, they WILL see it, and it will leave a lasting subliminal impression. If you’re a graphic artist, go ahead and design your own logo. If not, find a graphic artist to do it for you. Do NOT use one of those free logo design web sites where you click a few clicks and create your own. A badly designed logo can actually do more harm to a visitors first impression of you than no logo at all. The best way to get a very well designed logo for your business is to go to a site like ELance.com, where you can actually have a real graphic artist design and create a good logo for a fraction of what it costs to have it done by a professional design company. That little space at the top left corner of your web site may seem small and unimportant, but it packs a lot of punch when it comes to leaving a good, strong, lasting impression of your business on your site visitor. That, in turn, goes a long way toward increasing your sales conversion.