Increasing Online Sales By Increasing Trust
Topics: website traffic conversion, website trust, online sales conversion
Have you ever received an email that just didn’t sit right with you? Have you ever visited a website that made you wonder who was really behind it?
Or have you been to a website and made a purchase without even really thinking about fraud and transaction problems?
All of these elements stem from one element on your website - trust.
Whether you try to build it or not, you will have a certain amount of trust with every single one of your visitors. Those who don’t know you at all will judge you almost certainly by the way your website looks and “feels” to them.
It is extremely important that you develop trust with these people right away or you will definitely lose the sale, no matter how good the deal is.
Here is an easy way to build trust with those who have never met you before: Add credibility from other 3rd parties who already have trust.
Have you ever seen images of BBB Online, Verisign, or HackerSafe on other websites before (such as Yahoo! Shopping)?
These are called seals and are primarily used to build trust on your website. These three have one thing in common - they come from well known companies who have already built trust with many Internet users.
For example, HackerSafe (which I use in my shopping cart) allows people to see that your website can’t easily be hacked, which means that your customer’s private credit card information will not be stolen. This is a major concern with online shoppers, and could be one of the many reasons you are losing sales.
Over 800 companies have done split testing with and without the HackerSafe seal and have found an average 14% increase in sales. That’s huge!
To demonstrate how big a difference this could make on your sales, imagine right now that you are getting on average $5,000 a month in sales (obviously you may be doing more or less than this, but this is just an example). What if you increased those sales by an average of 14%? That means you would be making an extra $5000 x 14% = $700 per month, or $8400 per year.
Actually, that is not accurate, because all of those new customers that you would be acquiring would go on to purchase other products from you again and again, but we’ll leave the number this low to make our point.
What if the following year saw your business grow to $10,000 per month? Then you would be making an extra $1,400 per month.
Right now my business does on average $50,000 per month in online sales, which means if I could increase my sales by 14% I would see an extra $7,000 per month.
(In fact, I do use HackerSafe and have seen around a 10% increase in sales and opt-ins, not quite as high as the average, but hey, it’s still more sales!)
So where can you use these seals on your website?
Here are just a few areas where these seals can increase your profits:
1. On your squeeze pages.
Since a large portion of the traffic that hits your squeeze page consists of first time prospects, it is important to establish more credibility right away.
2. On your sales pages.
That extra trust seal can help you close a sale that otherwise would never have happened.
3. In your order process.
This is where you need something to tell your customer that they are safe, such as Verisign or HackerSafe.
4. In your advertisements.
If you have print ads, or if you use banner ads, adding in these seals will greatly increase the number of clicks as you will look professional just like websites such as Yahoo! Shopping.
In the end, you can have these seals anywhere on your website and you will see an increase in your trust and therefore in your profits.
Matthew Glanfield helps people start their own online Internet marketing businesses. Get answers to your questions by visiting his blog at www.bboinstitute.com
Previous Articles Highlighter:
What Makes A Good Article? And Who Says? (1)
Read posts and talk to others about your topic to get ideas flowing. Write articles based on a single fact or statistic. Journals, studies, and recent news articles are good sources for this type of information.
Choosing Your Article Content Keywords For Optimal Search Engine Indexing (2)
The search engine examines your website and all that it contains. The search engine will try to figure out if the keywords contained in your web pages are relevant to the user's search parameters.
What Are Web Directories For? (3)
The owner or promoter of the URL often pays a small submission fee to the directory to place his/her URL. In return, the payee hopes to gain some direct traffic from this directory and to improve the visibility of the website.
7 Ways To Boost Book Sales With Easy Online Book Marketing (4)
A mentor friend advised me, "To create daily sales, you must market daily." Here are some easy online marketing tips to include in your marketing plan. Include these, break the ebb and flow cycle for good and start a perpetual boost in book sales: 1.
Site Rubix Website Builder: Virtual World Reloaded And Revolutionized (5)
On your website, complete with text, images, audio and video presentations, you can certainly speak your mind and express your reality without a worry in the world how the technology behind these digital marvels works.
Targeted Website Traffic - For Your Success (6)
Now, targeted website traffic doesn't mean assured traffic. This just provides a high probability of more traffic. You do not want to fool anybody and everybody to your site.
Targeted Traffic With Pay-Per-Click Advertising (7)
If you want to build your website up slowly, get a customer base of loyal people that visit your website frequently and ultimately make sure that people are really satisfied with your website and have had a chance to look over it, then you should probably stay away from PPC in the early stages so that you can spend that money instead on different parts of your website.
EBook Writing Tips To Prepare You To Write (8)
Many ebook writers are able to slip in links to various products and websites they want to promote. This is o.k. and is normally accepted as long as how you do it does not affect the flow of the book.
Ignite Book Sales With Easy Internet Book Marketing (9)
Do you realize your most profitable trail leads to your current and former customers? Most business professionals including authors don't. They are too busy seeking after new customers that they neglect what they already have.
Quality Articles With Strategic Keywords = Page Rank Happy Search Engines (10)
Search engines are trying to provide internet surfers with good service in order to gain more traffic. The more traffic they have, the more expensive their advertising space becomes.
What Affiliate Marketing Mentors To Follow And Why? (11)
To be successful in affiliate marketing business is not an easy task and it will never happen overnight. It's just like an on going assignment where you need to find out and try various advertising strategies and tactics.
The Different Types Of Affiliate Marketing (12)
Aside from these three specific types of aff. marketing, a lot of other affiliate marketing types exist. If the classification is based on the depth of the affiliate network, it can be classified as single-tier, two-tier, and multi-tier affiliate marketing.
SEO Tips That Work (13)
Beating around the bush is never a good idea in SEO. Offer refund guarantees and customer testimonials to give visitors reasons to trust you. One thing more - never ever break a promise!
Entertainment RSS Delivered Straight Into Your Homes (14)
There are also feed directories that categorize RSS feeds by order of interest. This makes it easier for people to locate all of the information contained in RSS on any available topics online.
Building Your Opt-in List With EBay (15)
HTML is welcome here, so you can paste the code for your squeeze page, which contains the opt-in subscriber form in your advertisement. A classified ad cares an insertion fee of $9.95 for 30 days.
Website Design Strategy: Pros & Cons Of Flash-Based Sites (16)
Where exactly do we draw the line? Here's a simple breakdown. The Good: Interactivity Flash's Actionscript opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and designers have used Flash to create interactve features ranging from very lively feedback forms to attractive Flash-based games.
Domain Registration For A New Business (17)
The domain name registrar might control ownership of the requested name or the business owner might own it outright. Registering a domain name is considered to be a contract and every business owner knows that they should read and understand the contract that they sign when they apply for domain registration.
Free Search Engine Submission Is A First Traffic Building Phase (18)
Topics: seo, search engine optimization, free search engine submission After you get your first website build and hosted, the next think you will need is visitors and most people look at Google and other search engines as their main goal.
Online Marketing For Real Estate Listings (19)
Clean and vibrant graphic designs and a wide collection of offerings on your website such as informational and educational articles, RSS feeds, mortgage calculators, virtual tours, forums, polls, newsletters, and links to blogs, real estate listing directories, and other websites containing relevant, quality information are some of the features you should consider for your website to enhance the online marketing of your listings.
Formatting PDF Documents For Web Site Publishing (20)
The results are usually acceptable at first glance. There's absolutely no reason to really learn how to get the best from the software and your CONTENT. Making money on the Internet is not easy.
Newer Articles Highlighter:
Search Engine Optimization Is A Serious Marketing Approach (1)
Because the results are naturally listed, and are not paid for, they are call organic results, as opposed to the results shown from pay per click advertising. When people use one of the top search engines, they are presented with a mixture of paid results and organic listings.
Sick Of Harassment Marketing (2)
Keywords: MLM, Network Marketing, direct selling, networkmarketing, multilevel marketing, business opportunities Are you tired of chasing and harassing people all over the place about your multilevel marketing business and products? That was me!
Seven Ways To Find Affiliates To Promote Your Products (3)
Your affiliates are out there waiting for you; now go find them! Glen Hopkins specializes in teaching struggling entrepreneurs how to turn their small Online businesses into thriving money machines all while working less and earning more.
How To Create A Profitable Affiliate Program (4)
Your affiliate then earns a commission on that sale, too. --Backend Offers: Stay in touch with your customers and lead them through your sales "funnel." Then every time they buy something else from you, the affiliate who initially referred them receives a percentage of the sale.
How To Attract Affiliates Via Directories (5)
You can also attract them to you through affiliate directories or ads. To begin with, submit your program to as many affiliate directories as possible. You can start with Google.
The All-Time Best Traffic Source (6)
Without them, you wouldn't have made the sales their traffic produces in the first place. Your affiliate center is your "office" for your sales team. This is the place where your affiliates sign up, get their unique links, find all the promotional tools they need and stay in touch with you.
How To Create Your Affiliate Center (7)
That click then takes targeted traffic to your site. The likelihood of converting that traffic into buying customers increases dramatically as opposed to traffic arriving at your site from a simple ad.
How To Recruit Affiliates (8)
Go bold here. Dare to be different because being different gets you noticed. For instance, name your program. Add graphics to make the name pop and grab attention.
How To Educate Your Affiliates (9)
Or hold training teleseminars that teach them how to sell, how to become experts in pay-per-click advertising or even how to create their own products that backend your product. The more your affiliates know, the more traffic they will be able to drive to your site.
The Seven-Step Formula For Writing To Prospective Affiliates (10)
When you contact prospective affiliates, you need to tailor the letter to each particular person. You can do so by adhering to this format: First, open with a personal remark, preferably a compliment.
Using The Power Of The Press To Generate Free Online And Offline Traffic (11)
If your story does get picked up and featured in a news source, you establish instant credibility for yourself and your products while reaching an offline audience. So not only do you increase your traffic, you also increase your opt-in and conversion rates.
Combining The Ingredients To Create A Great Press Release (12)
2. Headline: your headline should be in boldface type, summarize your story and grab the attention of the editor using 10 words or less. If the headline doesn't intrigue the editor, he won't read your press release.
How To Start A Home Business With A Small Amount Of Money (13)
Garland Choate (GR) is a retired Airline Captain who now is a successful home business operator from the USVI. A very profitable (and easy) home business can be started for free at www.untoldmarketingsecrets.wahwarriors.com
Where To Find Hot Selling Products To Sell (14)
We have to look at all of the data we have collected on demand, competition, and advertising, and make decision as how they all balance out. And here are several factors or aspects that must be measured: (a) not enough demand means not enough people are going to buy (b) too much competition means not enough of a profit to go around (c) too much advertising drives up the price of pay per click ads, and competition as well (d) not enough general interest, combined with low demand, means there may not be a good market even if there is competition trying to make the sales.
The Secret To Off-the-Charts Marketing Success (15)
We want to help you think about your marketing in a whole new way and will start by sharing a key marketing concept we learned from Jay Conrad Levinson, the father of Guerrilla Marketing: "MARKETING IS EVERYTHING you do to promote your business, from the moment you conceive of it, to the point at which customers buy your product or service and begin to patronize your business on a regular basis.
How To Get Your Affiliate Program Noticed (16)
By offering your customers numerous products, you can offer your affiliates a commission each time a customer they referred buys from you. Two: What is the payment history? No one wants to join a program that has a history of making late payments or no payments at all.
The Five Ingredients Of Every Great Press Release (17)
Think of it as a story you are telling about your company. This story needs to cover the basics of who, what, when, where, why and how, appeal to the journalist and relate to your target audience.
Business Opportunity Affiliate Program (18)
However, we are anxious of what particular affiliate marketing program we are to choose. In joining a particular program, you must consider some important things. First, you must do a little research about the affiliate partner programs you intent to join.
Don't Sign Up With Any Web Host Until You Listen To This... (19)
CPanel handles all aspects of website administration in its interface. Purchase only what you need. Select a Web hosting solution that corresponds with your business needs. Only purchase services that your site will require to provide your specific content.
Is It Possible To Do An MLM Business Opportunity At Home? (20)
MLM people have great people skills and are self-starters. They have strong powers of persuasion and can influence people easily.They also have an ability to guide and encourage others to work the program.