One of the biggest thrills of having a website is watching visitors land, sign up for your freebie and maybe even buy your product – on their very first visit! I always find myself purring when that happens.
So I started asking, “How can we build trust through a website?” Of course you can build trust by sustaining performance. When your readers get your ezine week after week, with no interruption, they regard you as “reliable.”
But what can visitors learn in the first five minutes? And after reading, studying and listening to my own results, I’ve come up with 5 trust-building factors.
1. Create accurate, realistic, credible promises.
Believe it or not, one of the best ways to create realistic expectations is to follow principles of good copywriting. Create mouth-watering benefits and irresistible features. Tell readers what they’ll find and where.
2. Go boldly into the jungle of the Internet.
It’s no accident. The most successful website owners aren’t afraid to share success stories. They say confidently, “I can do this.”
Timid websites actually scare their visitors. “What’s he trying to do?” “Why doesn’t she ask for my order?” “Maybe I’ll hurt their feelings if I ask a tough question.”
3. Appoint yourself a ghost-buster.
Does your website resemble the Internet version of a ghost town? Do you display classes that closed six months ago and links that go nowhere?
Okay, I know. When you have a humongous website (and I do), you will get glitches. You will forget a key link to a class. You’ll have spelling errors.
But most readers can tell a “live site” from a “haunted site.”
Once I found the site of a high-profile marketing coach. Eagerly I followed the links to a promised teleclass, including requirements to fill out a zero-balance credit card form. And what did I get for my efforts? A notice, “Classes canceled until July 2006.”
In September 2006, that was not a good sign.
4. Get signed testimonials.
Once we could get away with testimonials from “Betty A. in St. Louis.” Today we need Betty’s full name and perhaps her occupation.
When you have sensitive topics, create a “success stories” page, where you can disguise the identifying features of your clients. Or you can create an information product and collect testimonials that attest to your knowledge and awareness.
And yes, the content of testimonials adds to credibility. That’s another article.
5. Add lots and lots of content.
Readers tell me they learn a lot about how I work when they read my articles and online book reviews. They get a sense of how I think. They can assess consistency from one web page to another and from one article to another.
My clients often find themselves moving from a thin bare-bones site to a strong, information-rich site. So their own clients feel right at home from the very first visit.
One of those clients recently told me, “I sometimes get booked directly from my site now. People feel they know me.” An added bonus: Content attracts traffic, too.
…
Cathy Goodwin, Ph.D. offers strategic copywriting and
communications consulting for small biz owners and
solo professionals who want to sell themselves without
sounding sales-y. “7 best kept secrets of client attracting websites”
http://www.copy-cat-copywriting.com/subscribe.html
“Bragging101: Promote Yourself the Write Way”
http://www.copy-cat-copywriting.com/bragging101.html
Read more articles written by Cathy Goodwin
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