How do you decide which website to purchase from? Most online consumers purchase from brands that are well recognised and trusted, but most businesses online will never be able to gain the recognition that a global brand such as Amazon enjoys. However, there are some simple things that you can do to your website to help build trust with potential customers. The first step is to ask yourself these basic questions that visitors will be looking for the answers to…
1. Who are you?
Even the most basic of websites should include your company name and your logo. This is how a visitor to your site will be able to identify your brand and who you are. Without displaying this, visitors will instantly lose any trust in you and simply move onto a competitors website. You should also include basic contact information as this will help with your credibility, especially if a visitor knows where you are geographically based.
2. What do you do?
Make it instantly clear to the visitor what you do; are you selling a physical product or offering services? What are these? Give a brief explanation of what you offer with clearly labelled links to pages about these with further information. Visitors don’t like to be presented with lengthy blocks of text, so break it down into smaller chunks that are easy to read.
3. Is this good value?
Not all customers will necessarily ask this upfront, but website visitors will be looking for evidence that your business provides good service and value for money. The best way to get this message across is to include recent testimonials on your website. These should be up-to-date and ideally have a name/ basic information next to them in order to boost credibility. Don’t just limit your testimonials to one page, spread them across the site in places that are easy to be seen and relevent to the content. For example in the sidebars of your website or place them within the content of the pages.
If you can, display a ratings summary to show how your business ranks in 4 key topics; was the service delivered as promised, value for money, considerate and helpful and quality of communication.
If you don’t currently have a system in place for collecting feedback or a way of systematically displaying these on your website, then talk to us about the FBR3 system and the Customer Care Programme
4. Why should I choose you?
What is your unique selling point? In an online world where every business has hundreds of competitors, you need to find something that makes you stand out from the crowd. This could be a special offer, for example ‘free delivery’ or a free trial offer. Whatever it is, make it loud and clear on the homepage of your website. There’s no point in having a unique offer, if nobody knows anything about it.
5. I like the sound of this – what next?
After a visitor has been satisfied that you have answered all of their questions, they need something to do next. Your website homepage should include a call to action, at the very least your contact number should be displayed in a prominent position on the website. Your call to action should be clear so that the visitor understands what they need to do next, whether it is how to buy your product, get more information about you or how to enquire further about your services.