+Appearance: First impressions matter. Recent research indicates that people will form an initial impression of your landing page or website within 50 milliseconds. This is almost as fast as visual processing happens in the brain, and can be considered as an instantaneous and automatic response. The initial reaction then extends to a more considered review of the page and will impact our likelihood of taking the desired conversion action.
*Professionalism of design: regardless of the intended audience or your business purpose, the visual design of your website should be professionally executed. It must hang together and function as a unified whole. Fonts, colors, and graphical elements must combine into a single visual "look."
*Sparseness and neatness: clutter can be your worst enemy--whether it is visual embellishments or dense, longwinded text. Less is more. Ruthlessly edit everything on the page until it is pared to its essence and has a natural and unforced feel. Give your page room to breathe.
*Organization & clarity: too many choices on the page canbe paralyzing. Similarly, a disorganized page increases the visitor's cognitive load and forces them to spend time simply trying to figure out how they should digest the information that you have presented. As the title of Steve Krug's excellent book on Web usability so elegantly outs it, "Don't Make Me Think".
+Transactional Assurances: will we be spammed if we enter our e-mail into a form? Will the goods promised ever be delivered after we order from an online catalog? Will our identity be stolen? Such questions are always in the background when we navigate around the Web.
*Forms of payment and delivery: many e-commerce catalogs only show acceptable forms of payment and return policies after the checkout process has been started. In fact, they must be seen before they are needed and prominently displayed above the fold on every page. The same is true of well-known delivery and shipping methods.
*Data security and privacy: the website must be certified as "safe" by outside experts in terms of its ability to protect data. Having privacy policies and computer security trustmarks from well-known vendors will instantly show someone that you have safeguarded their data properly.
*Policies and guarantees: often, the transaction is not at issue. It is what happens afterwards that concerns people. By prominently featuring warranties, return policies and gaurantees, you can assuage these anxieties. A visual seal can be created to draw the eye to these important elements.
+Experts & Media: your visitors are not likely to have heard of your brand. Unless you present a truly world-class consumer company, people are unlikely to know your brand promise. They do not know what you stand for.
*Reviews and awards: many services and products have won awards or at least been reviewed by relevant industry publications. Using the award seals or "reviewed by" language can be very effective.
*Pain endorsements and spokespeople: paid endorsements can convey trust or at least the celebrity of the spokesperson to the product or service in question.
*Marquee clients: using client logos with permission or at least prominently featuring a written list of clients(unless specifically prohibited by contract language)will create powerful visual proof of your legitimacy. They confer an implicit halo effect--if you have worked with large companies, you can handle smaller "regular" ones.
*Media Mentions: media companies are experts at self-promotion. Any association with them confers a sense of notoriety to your landing page. Often, media outlets can be broadly defined as bloggers or authoritative voices in your specific niche.
+Consensus of Peers: we often follow the lead of people like ourselves. For example, if our circle of acquaintances turn us on to a new musical group, we are more likely to listen. Regardless of the actual cultural tribes that we belong to, our peers exert a very strong influence on us.
*Objective numbers: "The many" can be demonstrated by showing how many people have bought, downloaded, or started a free trial. Numbers should be cumulative, starting with the inception of the business of product. Spell out the digits of each number(e.g."Over 1,000,000 downloads") and use large fonts to draw additional attention.
*Likeness: create affinity by demonstrating that the people taking action are similar to your website visitors. This can be done by picking appropriate colors, editorial tone and graphics to make your visitors feel at home. You can also have a large number of detailed testimonials that discuss common situations faced by similar people.
Trust is a critical factor to transactional success, particularly in an online environment. If you build on the four pillars of trust outlined herein, you should have a solid foundation for improved conversions.
Remember BE NICE & always, always SMILE :) have a GREAT Holiday one & All!
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