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
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