You may be doing everything right in your advertising, but unless people feel comfortable with and trust your website, they’ll never convert into a sale. People are inherently mistrusting, and the web is a scary place for many, so you have to go beyond the call of duty to make sure you portray how trustworthy you are.
So just what is it that makes people anxious about online transactions?
It’s important to note that a potential customer’s anxiety happens in their mind and emotions, not on the website. Thus, you need to react to their perceived fears and concerns, not those that you think are valid or that you think are caused by your website. They may have a big fear of using their credit card online, and while you may not share that concern, it’s a valid reason why that person won’t complete their purchase with your company. That is, unless you can proactively provide reasons they should overcome those fears.
The bottom line? Doing even a few of these things will significantly build users' trust in your business. This will mean more sales and higher revenue. And it’s much easier to do than contemplating site design tests to improve conversions.
Just follow these steps to improve your website conversions by reducing customer anxiety.
Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done
Build Credibility
Improving your credibility helps legitimize your business in the eyes of your customers. This is best achieved by using outside sources that your customers already have a relationship with and trust.
I recommend: Employ all the possible external credibility indicators such as
BBB online,
Trust-e ,
HackerSafe, and
VeriSign to name a few. Make sure to place these on pages of the site where people will be making the decision whether to place an item in their cart. They’re also useful at the end of the checkout process when people are debating whether to hit the purchase button.
Add Customer Ratings
Its one thing to say it yourself, but quite another to have other customers review your product or service. Ratings are a great way to prove how effective or reliable a product might be to those who are skeptical of its authenticity.
I recommend: Use 3rd party ratings systems such as
Shopping.com and
BizRate/Shopzilla to ease customer fears about reliability. Just make sure to check back often so that you don’t suffer by displaying low ratings which hurt your sales.
Bring out the Testimonials
Testimonials can be a powerful tool to assuage the concerns of prospective customers. Make sure to organize your testimonials so that those which discuss a specific concern are closest to the location where that concern will occur. Thus, if the testimonial is about how easy the checkout process is, make sure to place it near the shopping cart or at the beginning of the checkout page, not on the homepage.
I recommend: See this
Business Know How article on the best ways to acquire and then implement testimonials on your website.
Build Up your Company
Everything is in the eyes of the beholder. You may be a trustworthy company, but if you don’t make the effort to explain why, your customers will never know, much less believe you. You can build up your company using many techniques. Prominently display a phone number so people know they can reach a real person. Use your About Us page to speak personally to the customer. Satisfaction guarantees are another way to ease common customer concerns.
I recommend: Many articles discuss the specifics of these techniques. Here’s an article from
ClickZ with tactics for your About Us page. And another
article featuring stats on the benefits of using guarantees.
Tips & Tactics
Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide
- Common sources of anxiety are customer service, product reliability, credit card security, personal information sharing, and price. These are the areas you should focus your forms of anxiety relief as discussed above.
- The best way to reduce customer anxiety is to employ these techniques as close in proximity as possible to where the customer will be feeling that anxiety. Security seals work best in the checkout phase, but contact telephone numbers should be readily available as soon as someone hits your site.
- The language and tone of voice used across your website can also affect a customer’s anxiety. Make sure to match the tone of your site to the buying decision, whether that’s professional or casual.
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