Who Are You? Bring Out the Human Side on Your Site Raising the Barr Weekly Memo: Issue 174

This week’s reflection point: Many organizations have sterile websites that don’t really show who they are. When there’s no human interface on your site, customers can’t see the unique personality of your team. People don’t like to interact with machines; they want to interact with humans.

A woman once came up to me after I gave a speech at a conference. She had seen me at the same conference a few years before. “Chad,” she said, “I noticed you didn’t include any pictures of your kids and grandkids this year. I wish you had!” I was surprised—I told her I wasn’t sure the audience was interested in my personal life. “Are you kidding?” she laughed. “We love that stuff!”

She was absolutely right. Everyone loves to hear personal stories, learn about major life events, and get to know the real person behind the business persona. Here are four key ways to improve the human interface on your site:

1. Feature the unique voices of your team members. Your team is the heart and soul of your organization. Feature their voices on your site in creative ways. Include details about their personal lives in their written bios. You can also post video interviews of your team members to really bring them to life for your site visitors. Use pictures, video, text, and audio to share your team members’ work interests, family life, commitment to customers, and major life events.
2. Share what it’s like to work at your organization. Encourage your team members to blog, tweet, and post other social media updates about work. Foster a “free speech” culture at your organization. Your customers want to get to know your team. By sharing real-life stories about your organization, your team can connect with customers on a deeper level right away. Who better than your team members to share the experience of working on a new product, developing a service, or launching a new campaign?
3. Let your clients speak for themselves. Instead of sharing written testimonials from clients, why not let your clients say it directly? Post text and audio interviews with clients, create video interviews with them, and invite them to write guest posts on your blog. By letting your customers speak for themselves, you can feature case studies straight from the source.
4. Invite your partners to tell their stories. Invite your partner organizations to share their experiences on your site. Their stories about long-term loyalty and commitment can go a long way to humanize your company. How have your partners helped you in challenging times, and vice versa? Customers will love to hear anecdotes that demonstrate strong relationships between real people at your organization.

What are you doing through the human interface to help your team members, your partners, and your clients grow?

This week’s tip: Bring out the human side! Discover the secret sauce to creating an engaging site that brings your organization to life for your customers.