Increasing sales by building customer trust
Four tips to help you overcome your visitors' skepticism of your site and turn them into customers
Every visitor who comes to your website comes with skepticism about your products or services. They want to believe you have something that will meet their needs, but experience has taught them that what the seller says about their products aren't necessarily the most objective assessment of that.
But it's not all that hard to evaporate their skepticism and who them you can and will help them.
The following four guidelines can help you do this.
A. Be helpful, not clever
Many small business people, when they write their own copy, try to pattern themselves after the writers of 'cute' ad copy, filled with witticisms and clever turns of phrases. But straining to appear clever gets in the way of defining how your product or service benefits them.
And if you don't communicate those benefits to them, they'll go somewhere that does. They want solutions, not catchy phrases.
B. Show confidence in what you offer
You've seen sales copy filled with all capitalized letters, strings of exclamation points, and lots of gushy adjectives, like 'best,' 'great,' 'fantasic,' and so on. I bet that reading that kind of copy really raises your excitement and compels you to buy.
Yeah, sure. What that kind of copy actually does is scream to the reader, 'I don't have enough confidence in this product to let it stand on its own.' So the writer pumps it up with artificial excitement to hide his or her uncertainty.
Kill all of this kind of hype in your writing. And dump any subjective adjectives, like 'best,' 'phenomenal,' et al. Buyers typically tune out any gushy adjectives in sales copy. As a matter of fact, the more gushy adjectives they find, the more their skepticism grows.
The more objective your sales copy comes across, the more likely your visitors are to consider what it says.
C. Let them see what others think
Your visitors won't take what you say about your product as truth. They know you want their sale and don't know whether they can trust you to give them accurate enough information about whether your products meet their need.
So let them see some impartial opinions to reassure them. Show them third-party reviews, testimonials from satisfied customers, or independent tests of your products.
If they won't trust you, put them in touch with people they will.
D. Remove the customers' risks
Tests have shown that people assign greater value to something they already have than whatever they consider trading it for. That means that you must not just convince them that your product is of EQUAL value to the money they pay, but actually is worth MORE.
One way to do this is to reduce the risk that comes with any sale. They reduce what they feel your product is worth to the degree of risk they feel comes with it.
'What if I don't like it?' 'What if it breaks?' 'What if it doesn't work the way I want it to?' The more risk they perceive, the less they feel your product is worth.
So give them strong guarantees that show that you feel your product is as good as you say it is and are willing to back it up by taking whatever risk is involved on yourself.
The more unconditional and all-encompassing your guarantee is, the more you increase the value of your product in their eyes and the more likely you are to make the sale.
Final thoughts
You have no choice; you have to deal with the skepticism your visitors bring into your site or your auction. But overcoming it is possible. The key is to overcome your own skepticism.
Have confidence in your product. Let that confidence show in the way you present it and in your willingness to serve your visitors' needs. Let that confidence show in your willingness to let them see how others have benefitted from your product. And let that confidence show in your willingness to back up your words with your actions.
Helping you become the successful business owner you want to be.
LIKE THIS PAGE? ADD TO YOUR SOCIAL BOOKMARKS: Blink Del.icio.us Digg
 Furl Google Simpy Spurl
 Technorati
 Y! MyWeb
|
