street-corner vendor?
If you are like most people, you would much rather buy the car from a
dealership that sells other cars, has a good reputation and employs
many people. This is the same logic your online customers follow.
The web has empowered individual entrepreneurs to provide professional
services and products that match those of large corporations - but
most potential clients would still rather do business with a large
company than a sole-proprietorship. People who are searching for
products and services online constantly look for indicators of
reliability, quality and trust in vendors' websites. Visitors will
examine your website for these indicators beause it is a substitute
for examining your wares and visiting your offices. You can
dramatically increase the number of casual browsers that you turn into
clients by incorporating those indicators into your site. This article
will show you how to achieve this.
Reliability
You can convey reliability through your site by giving the impression
that your company has good customer service, a bureaucratic hierarchy
and that it's large in size. Showing these qualities can be done by
doing the following:
For one-person companies, classify the owner as a "General Manager" or
a "Chief Technician". This will explain to clients why their inquiries
are handled by a single contact, and will imply that there is another
person in the company who is the "Owner". This already increases the
perceived number of people involved in the company twofold.
All companies should have their telephone, email and mailing address
proudly displayed. Lacking a mailing address or a phone shows visitors
that you are not a legitimate company, nor reachable when needed. Many
contractors and owner-operators who work from home are reluctant to
post their address online, but the chances of being visited in person
(without prior contact) are slim compared to the benefit your address
gives to the "tangibility" of the company. One approach to decreasing
the chance of someone actually visiting is to classify the address as
a "mailing address only".
Providing a guarantee gives another boost to your company's perceived
reliability. This guarantee does not have to be substantial, though,
and may be as vague as "we guarantee the most professional customer
service treatment".
Finally, a mistake that many small business owners make is using a
free email (Yahoo! or Hotmail) as the company email. This sets the
alarm bells ringing in visitors' minds - real companies have email
addresses at their domain. There is no reason why your company should
not have its own email addresses, as even $7/month hosting plans
provide this capability.
Trust
Encouraging visitors' trust mainly involves showing to them that your
company is "real" and "tangible", not a fly-by-night operation.
Regardless of whether this is exactly what your company is, there are
several ways to make it seem otherwise:
Do not use generic stock images. Customers are constantly bombarded
with generic pictures of smiling people, computer racks and
skyscrapers - why should they trust someone who's pictures they've
seen on another site? Create your own pictures, or take the time to
choose unique and appropriate stock images.
Give visitors a glimpse into the "guts" of your company: post short
employee or manager profiles, with their pictures. Show pictures of
your offices or worksites - and ensure that they look authentic. When
they see these two things, visitors know that a) your employees are
real b) you have an actual location. If you have neither employees nor
an office, post a good picture of yourself working at a computer or
answering a phone (but make sure that your workplace is tidy and does
not look like a home office).
A great way to make visitors feel secure about giving you their
contact information is to have seals of approval posted next to your
contact form. This has been researched and proven to decrease
"abandonment" of your online forms. The best way to acquire seals of
approval is to get them from organizations such as the Better Business
Bureau, TRUSTe, and other approval organizations. A less expensive
substitute is to be certified by a smaller niche-agency or post a
membership seal from a professional association.
The final element of building trust is to have a privacy policy, and
to address visitors' concerns openly. In the text of your site, openly
state that you value clients' confidentiality, understand their needs
and hold each employee accountable for their ethical conduct.
Quality
Showing the quality of your products and services is related to
showing that you are serious about your business. Because your site
visitors cannot touch your product or experience your service, they
have to resort to evaluating your website itself as an indication of
the care you take in your craft. This makes it very important that you
take care in the way your site is built.
First of all, the look of your site matters greatly when it comes to
showing quality. If your website looks like it was made in 1997 (big
and blocky, misaligned, flashing animated GIFs) then you will not
impress any web surfers - regardless of whether you are the best
company in the offline world. Invest in bringing your site design up
to date visually. This does not mean being on the cutting edge, just
having tasteful design.
Also, you should ask a third party to review your website for spelling
mistakes. As we do more business online without seeing our
counterparty, we rely more on things such as spelling and grammar to
assess intelligence, intentions and background. For a client, shoddy
copywriting means shoddy workmanship on your end.
The final indicator of quality - testimonials - comes from the realm
of Sales. Having testimonials indicates to potential clients that
others have successfully used your services, and were satisfied. Place
testimonials in areas of your website where visitors will start
doubting your product or service's quality - such as in "product
showcase" pages or on sign-up forms. The more authentic your
testimonials feel, the better. It is always better to place a scanned
image of a written testimonial than to retype it into a webpage.
Honesty
Something that you should remember as you integrate these indicators
of reliability, trust and quality into your site is to never lie. You
should never place pictures of nonexistent employees, locations or
testimonials. You should never misrepresent the quality of your wares,
exaggerate your achievements or provide a fake address instead of your
home office address.
Your ultimate goal is to turn visitors into inquiries, and inquiries
into customers. If you initially misrepresent your company, the truth
will always come to light once you begin a business relationship with
the customer. There is nothing more embarrassing than having your
clients find out that you lied about yourself mid-project, withdraw
the project and complain about you to the local business chamber.
Most of the approaches outlined here put your existing business in a
better light. Once website visitors begin inquiring through email or
phone, you should frankly and openly discuss your company with them.
You should explain that "your location" is your home office, your
"team" is actually made up of subcontractors and professionals to whom
you outsource on occasion and that you are the Owner as well as the
"Manager". Honesty is very attractive. And once a potential client
hears that you are honest and knowledgeable, they will feel that there
is a real person interacting with them. There will no longer exist a
cyber-chasm that you need to bridge with your website, and you can
begin selling your product or service on its own merits.
Conclusion
Potential clients who visit your company's website feel that your site
reflects on your company. Because visitors cannot touch your products,
hear your voice or visit your office online, they have to rely on
certain factors in your website to decide whether to do business with
you. Through better design, better communication and genuine imagery,
your website can show that your company is reliable, trustworthy and
provides a quality product. If your website can convey those
qualities, then it's clear that your company is worth doing business
with.
About the Author: Jacob Filipp is the owner of the Toronto-based
Powerspirit SEO company. Jacob draws on 7 years of experience as a
programmer and web developer.
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