Of the sites you get to visit when using the web, how many of them do you decide to contact or eventually do business with? Also ask yourself, of the total visitors that potentially visit your own web site, how many of them end up contacting you and conduct business with you? What made you and your visitors contact the sites you visited or end up being their customer? I believe the answer may be summarized in three words: intrigued interest, value and credibility.How do visitors end up showing on your web site? There are several reasons. They may already know about you, been there before, get your business card, receive your company’s paperwork, view your email signature, told about it verbally, read it in the news or heard it on the radio or TV, be directed to it from other web sites or found it using search engines. Although the page displayed, especially if directed from a search engine, may not be your home page, the page that is displayed when typing your domain name (URL) is your home page.
The responsibility of your web development team, when developing your site, is to create ecstatically pleasing pages that are easy to navigate, grab attention, communicate the professional image of your company and most importantly, create immediate credibility.
The following are the 14 important basic ways to generate credibility on your web site:
- Testimonials – These are your clients’ words describing the impact you had on their organizations and how better off they are after working with you. You must continually request your clients to send you testimonials and when they agree to do so, make sure you suggest they comment on the biggest impact and outcome you had on their organization. When incorporating testimonials on your web site, I suggest you have a testimonial tab that includes as many as possible. Pull out the most powerful sentence and display on that page, with the client name and company name for additional credibility. On the various site pages, include appropriate testimonials that substantiate why you are the expert or why this product is outstanding. I also recommend you scan and link the original letter to the testimonial which allows the visitor to click and view online. Recently, the technology became available to easily and economically incorporate video testimonials from your clients. You may want to view our own web site for testimonial examples of the ideas illustrated above
- Quoted in – If you are able to be quoted in any publication, make sure you incorporate these quotes and where you were quoted on your site, preferably in a section dedicated to collecting all these quotes.
- Appeared in – As you get to appear on TV, other public appearances and various speaking engagements, incorporate the when, where and what the topic was on your web site with the appropriate testimonial.
- Articles – Your wisdom and knowledge are best depicted in the article collection you incorporate on your web site. These articles are a quick taste of your brain power and are the reason why visitors would want to talk with you. Do not concern yourself with delivering your intellectual property for all to view. The visitor will understand that if this is the value you deliver on the web, they can only imagine what they would learn when they would meet you in person.
- Value proposition – This sentence or two should tell me exactly what you do, how am I going to be better off when working with you and be intrigued to find out more.
- Newsletters and their archive – Consider archiving all your newsletters on your web site which will build the content that not only would benefit your visitors but also would be loved by the various search engines. Remember, great content rules the web.
- Check lists – These are always of tremendous value to visitors to be able to refer to a quick check list for certain tasks. Your check lists could cover; preparing for travel, action plan for strategy goals, writing an article and so on.
- Surveys – Why not conduct an online survey with your customers and publish the results online? Visitors are often interested to get the scores of what other successful organization or CEOs think of.
- Books and e-Books – I am not suggesting your public display of the books you like to read. I suggest you write your own books and enable visitors to inquire further, get a sample chapter, download the entire e-Book or purchase the book.
- Teleconferences and podcasting – Why not record your wisdom and knowledge and enable visitors to listen to some of it or download for free or for a fee?
- Videos and audios – Same concept as the previous point. Professionally record your next presentation and make it available on your web site.
- Typical client results – As I stated earlier, create a tab on your web site that describes in bullet points the great outcome you were able to generate for your clients. Outline about seven points and support them with client testimonials and scanned letters. Click here for additional examples of this client results concept.
- Case studies – Document some of the more interesting work you’ve done with your clients and place it in the case studies tab section. If possible and not revealing confidential information, name the client you’ve done the work for.
- Client list – Name your clients and be proud to publish their list online.
First remember that when it comes to your home page content, less is actually more. No one goes to your home page to read text upon text and no one cares. Your site should create the “Wow” factor when visitors get there. I often use the comparison of your home page to a highway billboard. Just like driving down the highway and either noticing the message on a billboard and thinking further about it or not, your web site generates the same reaction. Your visitor is either intrigued by the design, powerful message, and value they received and perceived credibility, or they press the back button and are out of there. The idea is to transform your visitors from thinking should I use you or how should I use you.
