Last night I opted-in for a free report on building website credibility (it’s something I talk about on my blog so I was curious what others were saying).

I actually feel the need to wipe the slime off me after reading it. It just felt wrong to me, and relied on little “almost illegal” (their words, not mine) tricks to build credibility in the eyes of website visitors.

The perspective wasn’t how to BE credible, it was how to APPEAR credible – and I realize after reading it that those are two completely different goals.

There were a few good, honest suggestions like adding your contact info to all your pages.  But among the other suggestions:

• Add a live chat box, but add it with the knowledge that you won’t make it active or actually allow customers to contact you with it.
• Fake testimonials from gurus by making it look like they endorse you when you’ve really just used something cool they said without asking their permission.
• Buy a cheap ad in Newspaper X and then add “As Seen in Newspaper X” to your sales page.

There’s more but I’ll stop there.  Maybe those aren’t technically lies.  You might change your mind and decide to login to be on the live chat sometime (even though you have no intentions of it).  A guru might like some aspect related to what you’re promoting (but has never seen your product).  If you have an ad in the paper technically you could be seen there.

Do these tactics work?  I’ve never tried them.  Clients probably won’t realize what you’ve done to sway them to purchase.  But do you want to make sales at the expense of your ethics and honesty?
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