I was sitting in a sales training today watching a training video and the presenter was covering the importance of the first impressions. Later I remembered a few things about an interview I had for a teaching postition at a college of holistic medicine.


I was being interviewed by the national manager and I had taken along my resume with copies of my qualifications as you would normally do. The manager was impressed and she said how some people just brought bits of paper. Well my resume was “bits of paper” but it was presented professionally.

I said, “Well you only get one chance to make a first impression.”

The presenter on the video was speaking about different channels of communication. The words we use - vocabulary, voice tone and inflection, rate of speech and body language. Here are the percentage values that he quoted for each communication channel in terms of its importance to the recepient in receiving the meaning of the message in a face-to-face interaction:

Words carry 7% of the meaning
Voice 38%
Body language 55%

Wow! Words only carry 7% and yet that is what we have to work with when communicating on the internet.

Notice that voice carries 38%, so there is a lot to be said for including voice on your website. Hmm, there are some new skills to learn in the near future.

Now this presenter was also talking about telemarketing and you would think that body language would play no part in that style of communication. Wrong. How you feel about what you say as well as how animated and dynamic you are when you say it is vitally important even when someone can't see you.

This point has powerful implications for online marketers.

Some people sell packages that include audio training. Some people follow up their web-based enquiries with phone calls and some website owners have audio on their site so all three channels of communcation are important in these situations.

Now for the webmasters who simply uses words to convey the message. We need to be even more diligent in developing our copywriting skills. Here are some great resources recommended by Allen Says of the Internet Marketing Warriors.