Talent show season is upon us once again. As American Idol gears up for its tenth year of finals, preparations for the US and UK versions of X Factor will dominate tabloid headlines and the bizarre human zoo that is Britain’s Got Talent has already attracted large audiences eager to make snap judgements on the appearance of the hapless contestants.

But the money shot for shows like Idol, Factor, and Talent lies in that moment when our initial judgements are blown away. Susan Boyle’s success as a singer is completely down to that famous audition. Appearance suggested that she would be awful, her performance proved she wasn’t.

To say that first impressions count for a lot is hardly revelatory. Draftfcb has worked out that initial impressions are formed in those first 6.5 seconds. As an organisation they believe in this so fundamentally that they have incorporated this statistic into its  branding: “6.5 seconds that matter”.

For agencies, the company website should in theory provide the perfect opportunity to demonstrate their creative flair and talent, and boy do some of them go to town. A quick trawl through my contact book throws up some interesting examples. Saatchi.co.uk is largely blank, except for a carousel of its greatest hits, Agencynet opts for a collection of media buzz-phrases (they lose points for “digital dna”, and over at Initials you can enjoy lots of charming Flash animations. These agencies are like the X Factor contestant that comes bounding on stage waving and cheering, turning somersaults and making a grand theatrical entrance. For 6.5 seconds I’m very impressed – until I actually try to use the site.

Those first 6.5 seconds are followed by a full five minute trying to find out how the site actually works. The Saatchi website is so minimalist you feel like you shouldn’t be there, and as I click round Initials, I’m directed to all sorts of places off-piste, including the travel news section on the BBC, and the British Airways booking page.  This is all very sweet, but I can image quite infuriating to the brand marketer who attempted to find out more about Initials.

Naturally, agencies are often very pleased with their creations. Research from The Haystack Group revealed that 76% of agencies thought their website was a good representation of their agency. This would be marvellous, if it weren’t for the fact that the same research revealed that 93% of brand marketers cannot get the information they want from agency websites.

So the agency sites look the part, but most of them are failing to do the job in communicating information to potential clients. The Haystack Group’s Alan Thompson says this makes it difficult for marketers to compare agencies and the services they offer: “They don’t really find what they’re looking for from a website, so the user experience is quite disappointing. The agencies who actually conceived these things are very proud and feel like their sites are doing the job they want”.

There are some agencies who have attempted to be creative and useful in their approach to the company website. Self-styled conversation agency ‘we are social’ has placed social media front and centre of its homepage. Boone Oakley eschewed the entire of a homepage, and used an intricate network of clips on YouTube instead. This sounds worryingly complicated, but is in fact an incredibly easy and innovative homepage solution.

“The time for any agency to talk to a client in a new business sense is when they’ve got something that fulfils one of the client’s needs,” says Thompson. “That’s when it’s going to be the most potent conversation”. Canadian agency Zulu Alpha Kilo has employed this idea to an extreme, using a website that has no functionality on it at all, save a request for some information.

So where does all this diversity leave the poor brand marketer who just wants to browse through some agencies and compare the services they offer? Until recently, nowhere – but Alan Thompson reckons he has the answer with Haystackonline.com. According to Thompson, agencies find it really hard to focus on their customer’s needs when they’re talking about themselves, so Haystackonline creates a framework in which all participating agencies can demonstrate their services and abilities, effectively bringing some order to the marketplace.

It’s a very sleek set-up. Agencies are still given space to show off their creative chops, but by virtue of their work and not their website. Allowing the work to speak for itself creates a level playing field for agencies of all shapes and sizes. As with Cream, there’s no room for agency ego on Haystack, and whilst I would be expected to say this, the two products complement each other rather nicely.