Get More Online Conversions With a Likeable Website

Trust and credibility are two very powerful persuasion principles that are rarely talked about in relation to a website. Any good salesman knows that people buy from people they know, like and trust. But an online buying experience is about as far away from this principle as you can get, yet people are still hard wired to buy this way online or off. The human need for buying from someone they know, like and trust still needs to be satisfied in an online buying situation.

Trust and likability play an important role in boosting your online conversion rate despite the distance from an in person experience. Your prospects need to know, like and trust you before he buys online still needs to be satisfied it’s just interpreted differently online than in person. We as a species have hundreds of years of burn in with direct face to face interaction we’ll need a bit of time to catch up online.

In order to successfully use the persuasive principle of likeability as part of your conversion rate optimization strategy, your website first needs to be trustworthy and credible. Simply stated the more we like someone (or a company or a brand) the more we want to say yes to him or her.

Do Your Prospects Trust You?

Do customers feel one way towards your brand and product and another way about your website? Or do they see your company and your website as one in the same? With technology becoming more and more pervasive in our lives, it is my belief that customers carry feelings they have of your company and transfer them to your website and vise versa. If your website looks old or is difficult to use your brand takes on those characteristics. The connection between your product and your website is more akin to an integrated marketing approach. Just take a look at the apple website to see how it’s in-line with the brand not just from a design approach but also from a usability and personality point of view. This is a lot harder to get right because it is a soft touchy feely kind of right but it is worth it to spend the time to get right, your conversion rate will be the proof of that.

Just as the company we keep and the books we read and the possessions we own are extensions of ourselves so are similar factors about your brand. I like to think of brands as an individual. We associate ourselves with the brands we are truly passionate about. If a brand that we are raving fans of were a person, they would be our friend, or perhaps our best friend. That’s why brands often reach beyond the product and take stands on the environment and other causes.

So if brands are individuals then they are complex and multidimensional, just like people. There are multiple factors that represent them and in which we can associate ourselves with. An example of this is the Hell’s Angel Bikers, they are simply extensions of the Harley Davidson brand, as much as the distinctive sound of a Harley engine or the spirit of the open road is. The brand and the website have to match in imagery, copy and usability.

So How Do You Use These Principles To Get More Visitors Buying?

As with any conversion rate optimization strategy the more conversion principles you use in combination the larger gains you will see. There is a multiplying effect here but in this particular case – the trust, credibility and likeability combo have a compounding effect and all three need to work together in order to support your conversion rate marketing strategy.

The combined conversion punch of trust, likeability and credibility online can be broken down into 4 main components.

1. What You Already Know
2. Look and Feel
3. Content
4. Customer Service

What You Already Know
All your prospects have baggage. We already know something about every company or at least we feel something about an industry even if we don’t know anything about it. Visitors have already mentally decided the level of trust and likeability about you before they even get to your website. If you’re an offline brick and mortar store like Home Depot, Barnes and Noble, Starbucks, people already have a certain feeling about you that they are bringing to your website. If you have no offline presence or are a smaller site that’s not well known then visitors bring a level of trust with them about your industry. To design an effective lean mean converting machine you have to be aware of what baggage your prospects are bringing with them before the click in order to effectively use persuasive web design to reinforce or counteract that baggage.

Look and Feel
First impressions are everything. Not only does your site need to look professional but your overall site design needs to match what you are selling. If you’re selling safety and security your visitors have to get that in the first 2 seconds without reading a single word of your copy. The look will set the stage for your brand. There’s no room for dissonance here. Your site needs to match the brand and reinforce trust.

Content
Your content supports all the other elements in establishing likeability, trust and credibility online. This is the glue that is held together with transparency. There is no better support for likeability and trust than being completely transparent and honest in every interaction you have with your customers.

Beyond transparency likability, trust and credibility extends to your value proposition and of course your products and services. Generally people want to be reassured and don’t want to be lied to. Tell them about the history of your company, the company values, the people behind the curtain. Make your content human and it will naturally be more transparent.

Customer Service
What happens after the sale? Is it easy to locate who and how to contact your company if there is a problem after your customer has made a purchase? Are there resources online that can help? Do you answer your customers with a personal email or one that is clearly a stock message? The availability and ease of locating and contacting you after a purchase all contribute to trust, likeability and credibility.

There are a lot of elements that build on trust with online interactions, this is by no means a complete list. And this is not something that you do once and forget about it. Trust is built slowly one small step or interaction at a time. There are hundreds of ways to build or destroy trust online many of which don’t even need to be on your website. Social media sites such, as Facebook and Twitter are excellent places to start to build that relationship, which ties back to the first component of what your prospect already knows about you before ever arriving to your site.

You should follow me on Twitter here to continue our relationship.

Here’s where the proper voice for your sales copy is important and also where video is picking up the online persuasive ball and running with it. Video adds two dimensions, sight and sound.