Are Customers Secretly Suspicious of Your Business?

Trust is everything when it comes to buyer persuasion. If a potential customer doesn’t trust that you are who you say you are and can do what you say you do, their attention and purchasing intention will disappear.

Unfortunately, BEING trust-worthy isn’t enough. You’ve got to communicate this effectively, particularly on your website.  People make decisions within split seconds and since anyone can put up a website these days, visitors need more reassurance that you are reputable and amazing at what you do.

So take a look at your website and see if you’re doing the following3 steps, if not you might just be making potential customers too suspicious to hire you…

Show off the skeletons in your closet

If you know that there is something that your customers might see as an objection, don’t ignore it, include it in your web copy and use it as an opportunity to build credibility and trust.

If you take the initiative to be transparent about how you operate your business, you will appear much more confident than if you are on the back foot.

For example, I was talking to a client who manages to keep their overheads down by working from home. His company deals very successfully with large corporate events and with his latest marketing push, he wants to explain why they are competitive in price, without appearing low quality compared to other companies. This is a perfect example of something you would want to be up front about, so that you can turn it into a selling point, for example:

“By having an experienced mobile team, when you bring your event to us, you’re not paying for our office, heating bills, our coffee, or our computer maintenance, you’re paying for the best quality event that we can deliver. By operating efficiently in this way, we are able to save our customers on average 25%-30% compared to the same service from our competitors.”

Feel free to boast – but back it up…

If you claim to be a multi-national huge corporation but your website is: http://littleunred.wordpress.com/ your customers aren’t going to believe you.

Think also about the kind of service you offer, if you claim to have the best web design business this side of the universe, make sure your own website is fantastically swish and suave.  I know that as a business owner, you’re going to put all of your energy into your client work, but you do need to take time and give your site and marketing materials the best design and copy you can.

Think of it this way, if you have an amazing service, but can’t convince your customer, they’re not going to benefit from the wonders your business can bring them, and that would be a huge shame.

Show them you’re sticking around for a while

What do we do when we think about hiring someone? We look them up on Google.

If nothing comes back, we might not mind, but isn’t it much more convincing when you can find articles written by them, conversations through Twitter, blog comments etc. Your reader is going to feel less likely that you could do a bad job and disappear when your reputation is endorsed by so many others on the web.

That doesn’t mean to say that Google is the be all and end all of visibility, any kind of positive visible interaction between you and other business owners, clients or blog readers will reinforce trust in your business.

Also, If possible, have a photo of you or your team on your website. It will look more authentic and give customers the feeling they’re getting a glimpse behind the scenes, and there are real people peering back at (in a non-creepy kind of way).