Seven Website Design Secrets to Get You More Sales
Secret #5 – Get Trusted
Read the previous website design secret – Get Leads
Most websites don’t work, i.e. don’t contribute sales to your business. In this series of seven blog posts – Seven Website Design Secrets to Get You More Sales, you will learn how to change that and make your website a sales machine for your business.
Each post will contain a video and text for you to read and a downloadable workbook for you to take notes and use to improve your own website.
Website design secrets: Number five is to Get Trusted: According to David Temple “It’s easier to build trust offline because you have an office, a store, a physical manifestation of your presence. Those signals make it easy for people to trust you. Online you don’t have those same signals so you have to build them.”
The reward for earning trust is loyalty!
When visitors first land on your website, they are asking themselves, if they are in the right place and the very next question, if they’ve answered yes to that one, is can I trust you (or are you for real)? There are a number of things that are required on your website, to ensure that their question(s) are answered with a resounding YES.
Credibility Indicators
Very early on when your website visitors arrive on your website, you’ll want to establish your credibility by clearly displaying credibility “indicators”. Think of a bricks and mortar store and the things that are often displayed there, such as qualifications, photos of customers and so on. Website credibility indicators could be:
- Clients you’ve worked with (often websites just show their logos)
- Qualifications or Certifications that you have (again, logos if these are widely recognized)
- Prizes or Awards you’ve received for your work
- Your Partners or Suppliers
- In some cases, what systems or processes you’ve studied (and are familiar with)
Testimonials
Testimonials from your happy clients is one of the most powerful ways to demonstrate that you are trustworthy. Ideally you should have a complete testimonials section in your website, where you can collect testimonials from your clients and have them published in a dedicated section. Then, display “snippets” of these testimonials on prominent places throughout the site, e.g. the Home Page, key services pages (pick appropriate testimonials) and in the blog sidebars.
A variant of Testimonials is Reviews – if you have reviews from clients or customers on other directories (such as Google Business, Foursquare, Urban Spoon, Trip Adviser, Yelp etc), then include these on your website as well.
Even better, is if you can get celebrity endorsements! You see that used widely in TV and Radio advertising.
Opt-In, Email System and Call to Action
In order to get contact details (typically just email and first name to start) from your website visitors, you need to offer something of value in return. This is your Lead Magnet. Lead magnets come in many forms. In the early days of the internet “Sign up for our e-newsletter” would get attention, but not these days. In today’s world, you need to stand out and make it clear with your Lead Magnet Offer, that you are providing outstanding value.
Some things that work well are:
- Checklist – Cheat Sheet – Handout
- Free tool – toolkit – resource list
- Swipe Files
- Video Training – webinar
- Free trial (software)
- Free consultation
- Coupon – exclusive deal
- E-book, Whitepaper – need to be well presented in offer.
The Call to Action, to have your visitors sign-up for the item of value should be quite clear, yet compelling. “Subscribe”, “Submit”, “Send” just don’t convert visitors to leads (i.e. get them taking action). Much better are “Download Your Free Report Now” or similar. Ideally, your call to action should tell your website visitor exactly what they’ll get when they click on the link.
Case Studies
If you can showcase how you’ve solved a problem and provided a solution or product for a client like your ideal client and describe as well as show the benefits that you provided to that client, that will also contribute greatly to building trust and credibility with your website visitor. Case studies can be combined with testimonials from the client for which you’ve done the work.
Risk Removal
Risk removal or risk reversal is a powerful method to increase sales by easing the buying decision and allaying fears consumers might have. Essentially you take on all the risk and remove the risk from your website visitor. Some ways to do this are to offer either a free, limited time trial to your product or service, OR a guarantee.
Portfolio of Works or Showcase of Products
Your portfolio is a great way to showcase your work. It needs to be used strategically to send the message you want to convey and the skill sets you want to highlight.
Your portfolio is not just a dump of everything you have ever done. It needs to position you as the expert in whatever niche you have decided you are going to own.
Think about how it will be viewed and what messages you are sending. Consider how much time someone will actually be looking at your portfolio. In most cases it won’t be looked at for more than a few moments.
It needs to capture the viewers’ attention in a matter of seconds. This is achieved by allowing the photos to tell the story. Most people will only read the headings, not the copy.
In summary then, the fifth of our Seven Website Design Secrets, is to Get Trusted. Show your audience why they should trust you and consistently deliver exceptional value to build on that trust.
In the next post of the Seven Website Design Secrets to Get You More Sales series, we’ll cover the topic of Getting Action. In the meantime, please take a look at the workbook and find opportunities to improve your website – then take action.
Please leave your questions or feedback in the comments below.