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Earning
Your Visitors' Trust
09/26/2002 - Author, Pam Roth, CreatingOnline.com
When designing a business site, there are several things you
can do to help earn your visitors' trust, a key factor in making sales
and encouraging repeat visits:
1.
Provide complete and accurate information about yourself, your
company, and your service or product. One of the reasons often cited by
consumers hesitant to shop online is the uncertainty of knowing exactly
what they will be getting. Erase that uncertainty by providing
product photos and detailed descriptions. Convey your expertise in the
field to which your site is related. List your credentials. Let your
visitors know why they should have confidence in you and your service or
product.
2. Ease of navigation is extremely important. Don't attempt to
dazzle your visitors with design at the expense of site
usability.
3. Project an image of honesty and sincerity. Include prominent
links to your site's policies, such as those regarding privacy,
shipping, refunds, and customer service. Compose a brief narrative in
plain conversational language to express your true, unbiased viewpoint
on your site's topic, as opposed to a page full of nifty slogans.
4.
Be upfront with your visitors about pricing. State the price on the first page or include a link to your pricing
page there. Your visitors will appreciate this, and you'll
earn points immediately with them. If your visitors have to conduct an
extensive search to find pricing information, they will soon begin to
feel that your service or product must surely be overpriced and will
leave without wasting another minute of their valuable time.
5. Give your visitors something for free, even if only
information or links to related resources. If they don't make a purchase
at this visit, they will at least leave with the feeling of having
received something of value from having visited your site and will
bookmark it for future reference.
6.
One of the most effective ways of lending credibility to your
site is for you to "get real." Your visitors need to feel
confident that you are a genuine company in the real world. This can be
accomplished via "people photos", place of business photos,
bio, a real physical street address, and several contact options (i.e.,
phone number, email, fax number.) This goes a long way in helping your
visitors to feel you are not just another fly-by-night website.
7. Promptly reply to all customer inquiries. Let them know their
needs and concerns are important to you and deserving of your immediate
attention. Reply within 24 hours, even if only to confirm receipt of
their correspondence and to let them know when they may expect an answer
to their question.
8. Don't overdo banner advertisements. A few banners
strategically and tastefully displayed are okay, but do not bombard your
visitors with popups on entrance and exit and ads all over the place
mixed with the site's content. This will only serve to confuse and annoy your
visitors, who will probably make a fast escape and a mental note to never
return.
9.
Project professionalism by performing a thorough site check.
Solicit a few friends to double-check for you. Your site design may look
professional at first glance, but tiny little errors such as typos and
broken hyperlinks are glaringly obvious to visitors and ultimately spell
"amateur."
10. Use the exclamation mark sparingly and not at the end of
every sentence. No one can be that happy! :)
573 words
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