Is your website building your credibility? Or scaring away clients? Here are 10 easy actions you can take to boost your website’s credibility and help those visitor feel comfortable purchasing from or working with you.
Add your complete contact information to every page. The footer is a good place for this. Visitors will feel more comfortable when they know they can get in touch with you if anything goes wrong with their purchase.
Be Accessible. Give visitors multiple ways to contact you including snail mail, email (or a web form), telephone, and/or social networks. This is especially credibility-building if visitors can visit your social network links, such as a Facebook fan page, and see that you are actively interacting with and responding to your fans and clients.
Add a “Question” form or link to one on every page that’s selling a product/service. Many online shoppers don’t complete a purchase because the product photograph or description didn’t answer one little question they had. If you’ve got a question form or a “click here to ask a question” link at the bottom of all your product/service sales pages will give those visitors an easy way to contact you with their question while they’re still considering the purchase.
Add logos of the payment methods you accept. It helps visitors feel comfortable shopping with you when they see logos they recognize. Visit your payment processor’s website and most offer a page with logos you are allowed to add to your website.
Use a secure shopping cart for checkout. There are many free and inexpensive options to accept your customer’s order securely online. Don’t expect visitors to email you or contact you to purchase an item. Try Mal’s E-Commerce or E-Junkie.
Add the logos of any professional organizations you belong to. Third party validation of your expertise or product quality boosts confidence. If you belong to the Better Business Bureau, local Chamber of Commerce, an online association related to your product/service, or have been reviewed or certified by a professional group or program, add their logo to your website.
Add testimonials/customer feedback throughout your site. Don’t confine your feedback to just a feedback page, though you do want a feedback page. Also feature the testimonials on the pages where you offer the products for sale. Include the name and city/state of the person who gave you the feedback (with their permission) and a photo if possible. Audio and video testimonials are fantastic.
Link to other sites where your products have been reviewed. Have customers left you reviews on your Facebook fan page? Merchant Circle? Other third party sites? Link to them! It’s even more credible when visitors can see legitimate testimonials on another website.
Be sure you have clear sales policies. Create or update your policies page to include clear information on what payments you accept, what your shipping charges and methods are, whether you offer refunds and in what circumstances. There should be a link to your policies page from every page of your website.
Be sure you have a clear privacy policy. Customers want to feel safe that you won’t share their information with any other companies. Create and follow a clearly defined privacy policy. This should also be linked to from every page of your website.
These ten tips will help you create a website that inspires confidence and helps visitors feel safe doing business with you.
Thanks for some great tips on reinventing your website. I posted a link on my Facebook fan page(fb.com/remarkablesolutions) today about some legal issues we must all acquaint ourselves with for our online exposure. Your article is the other part of it…building a site people can easily read, find, do and go. I guess I know what I should post for tomorrow…this article. Thanks, Michelle!
Thanks for sharing this post, Bea, I’m glad you found it helpful. I’ll check out the link on the legal issues – it is very important to keep up with that.