The Tipping Point—Web Logo Style

The other day, a friend who runs a small business lamented that his Web site wasn't worth the trickle of business it brought in. Something told me he's not alone. In fact, some estimates have found the majority of small-business Web sites fail to generate revenue.

Which is too bad, because I think that entrepreneurs like my friend make a mistake by blaming the site itself, or even the medium of the Web. The problem, in my view, is not the site—it's the lack of trust in the company behind the site. Trust is an elusive concept, of course; the sort of term bandied about freely in Marketing 101 but rarely defined adequately since any of us found ourselves in that class. Building trust is important. Building trust via your Web site is essential. Now here comes the biggie: How?

One way to build trust is through something right under your nose, and I mean that literally—your corporate logo. You see, long after the Marketing 101 phase of things, I wrote my Ph.D. thesis on logos. (If you'd like the full, luxurious academic title, it's How and Why Credibility-based Logos are Effective in Marketing Communication in Persuading Customers to Take Action: A Multiple Case Study Toward a Better Understanding of Creativity in Branding.) In a nutshell, here's my argument: Used on a Web site, a company's logo can increase (or decrease) conversion rates at first glance.

That last bit is more important than it might seem. We're talking about a high-stakes game that's over in an instant. For first-time visitors to a new Web site, the logo either communicates trust or the visitor leaves. (Don't just take my word on this; recent research from Google AdWords found that the decision of whether to stay or leave a site takes place in under eight seconds.)

Which means your logo had better say what it has to say quickly—and according to my research, the one thing it needs to say more than anything else is this: Credibility. That just happens to be something else I proved on the way to my Ph.D.: A logo that conveys credibility will increase conversion rates over four times compared to those that consumers do not consider credible.

When visitors first click on a Web site, they don't have much time to read anything on the page. Like most all perceptions at an early stage, Web site impressions are wholly visual. What's going on? Research on Web site credibility by Stanford University professor B.J. Fogg concludes that people's minds are seeking one bit of information: Whether the company behind the site is—yes, you guessed it—credible.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and more recently, Blink, calls first-glance impressions leaping to conclusions as "adaptive unconscious" or "thin slicing." Adaptive unconscious studies examine how we draw conclusions intuitively in an instant as apposed to careful deliberation and analysis. Hence, the term "thin slicing." The author uses examples such as meeting someone for the first time, interviewing a job candidate or reacting to something we've never seen before. We use our adaptive unconscious mechanisms to make judgments at first glance. It is our "gut feeling" about something or someone. On a Web site, this is "first glance" Web turn-on. Or, of course, turn-off.

So—quickly now!—look at the logo on the lower left.

Full disclosure: My company's design team produced this logo (yes, for profit, albeit a very modest one) for a small house painter in New York. But I'm using it here because it exemplifies my philosophy of credibility-based logos better than most any other.

How? Well, in this case (and, frankly, in many others, no matter what the business is) the notion of credibility cleaves neatly into two traits—expertise and trustworthiness. Since house painting is this company's core business—its expertise—the logo reflects that most obviously in the name but also in the symbolic paintbrush shaped like a house. The logo communicates its "trustworthy" dimension nonverbally, via a clean, contemporary style (in particular, the house portion of the brush that's red, suggesting both a painted house and bristles wet with paint) that suggests desirable and flattering attributes such as efficiency and on-time execution.

More marketers would prosper if fewer of them made the mistake that my friend, the small-business owner, did. If your Web site is failing to drive numbers, don't blame the site. Subject its logo to the credibility test, and be quick about it.



Bill Haig developed corporate logos for four decades before turning to teaching. Most recently he co-authored the book The Power of Logos. You can reach him via www.powerlogos.com.