There's a little Web secret that can help you kick off relationship-building with a visitor's first stop at your site. Tuck some personal stuff in the nooks and crannies of your site.

Walmart's an expert at this. If you read the Walmart Sunday supplement, you'll see every model is the daughter, cousin, or nephew of some Walmart employee. Same on the web site. No, it's not to save on modeling fees…they do it to create a personal connection with you, the reader. Walmart uses real kids just like yours, and even tells you their names. And it works.

While researching web sites, surfers often click first on pages where they expect to find information about the people in your company. Visitors are often more curious about the folks behind the site, rather than the technology or the mission.

Why? Because people do business with other people, not companies, corporations or web sites. Buying a CD or umbrella from a web site can save the customer time and aggravation (more often than not, we hope), but the real relationship is built between that customer and his perception of who is handling the transaction at your end. Every time you deliver at a customer touch-point, trust grows and the likelihood of a loyal relationship increases.

Where do these trust-hungry people go when they hit your site?

You might see a click path from the home page to “Management,” “Team,” “Customer Support,” or perhaps “Jobs”-–frequently the sections of a site that reveal something about the people who work there. These visitors are gathering morsels of information before they take the big leap--to buy something or to accept your content as truth.