Your landing page is the front door of your store; the main thing that customers will use to decide whether or not to continue and buy something or whether they will head off to another site. Landing pages run a fine line between enticing people and giving enough information to be trustworthy.
Although many people think of landing pages’ main theme being that of enticement, their hidden (and far more important) goal is to establish a sense of trust between the customer and the business. Customers who trust a business are far more likely to do regular and consistent shopping there than at a business where this trust has not been established. Now, of course, some of this will happen by you keeping your site free from viruses and having security up, but the rest has to happen in your landing page.
It does not matter at the end of the day how wonderful your flash banner ads were or how enticing your articles on other sites are. What it all boils down to is how much trust your landing page garners. That’s a pretty heavy burden, so how can you pull it off?
1. Your Real Address
This is always a trust builder. If you’re willing to put your physical address on your site, it means that you are willing to remain more or less transparent and that you are a real person with a real business, not some scammer.
Whether it’s an office, the location of your parent store, or somewhere else, a physical address is necessary to build trust. And if you are worried about being swamped, don’t be. There is absolutely no way to tell if someone is coming to you because they learned of your address from your site or not. Mostly, the physical address is just to provide some peace of mind and then most people tend to forget it a few seconds later.
For example, the Contact Us page of 3Leaps contains its physical address, phone no and a contact form so that people can get in touch with the company easily.
2. Create An About Us Page
Your customers want to know more about you and your brand and which is why it is imperative for the marketers to have a well written About Us page. The About Page of the website should contain concrete information about the brand and it should be not be treated as a filler page under any circumstances. The idea is to reassure people that the company is a genuine one and has a history of treating customers with respective and meeting the needs of their clients. For example, the About page of Select Media (https://www.selectmedia.asia/) contains short bios of all its team members. It allows visitors to take a good look at the profiles of its team members and it helps instill trust in the mind of the visitors.
3. Your Phone Number
A local phone number is a good idea if you have a business in the services; that way, people will choose your service over others because your local. The neighborhood air of trust that still pervades is at work here; people are more likely to hire on someone nearby.
If you don’t want your local number displayed, you can use a mobile phone, a toll phone or your office line and see how that works. It should all be effective and furthermore, gives the customer peace mind because they know that if they call that number, they can contact you directly. This is really a boon for older customers who may not trust the internet and for savvy browsers who know full well that most e-mail goes straight to spam filters.
4. Show off Your Security
Whether you’re secured by McAfee, Norton’s or something else, show it off! Everyone has heard horror stories about their information being stolen or used against them and by showing that you will protect their information, you build trust. These badges are often small too, so they’re not hard to place in clear sight without damaging the overall appearance of your website.
Placing your security badge in the check out part of your site is the best place, though putting it on your landing page will also show that you take your security very seriously. Really, putting your badge in both places would not be out of line.
5. What About After the Customer Buys?
There are a few things you can do to ensure trust right away in potential shoppers. Things like a 100% money back guarantee, a secure shopping cart to buy with, and a solid refund/return policy that is simple to follow are all great ways to put a customer’s mind at ease about what happens after they click ‘Buy’.
You should clearly outline things like how long it takes to ship a product, make sure you have an auto-email informing a customer of what they have bought and when it will ship (and even an auto-email that goes out once the item is shipped a la Amazon) and how long they have to do a return and what the policies are for that. It only takes a small paragraph but laying all this out clearly puts a customer’s mind at ease and prevents potential legal issues later on.
And of course, make sure you have a completely secure check-out procedure and that there are a few ways to pay. Popular ones are PayPal and credit card, but some checkouts also allow pay with debit and other options.
6. Post What Others Have Said About You
Real, honest to God testimonials from happy customers are a must. When potential customers see that others have used your services and products and been happy, they are more likely to buy from you see for themselves. Ask your friends and family to test your products or services first and gather early testimonials and then as you get more people, you can replace these ones with ones from customers you don’t know.
7. Privacy Policy
Somewhere in your site (usually at the bottom or on another linked page), you will need your privacy policy. Almost always, this includes the promise not to resell your customer’s information and not to spam your customers or allow others to spam customers. It only has to be a couple lines, usually: Such and such promises we will never sell your private information to a third party and that all of your information will be kept private.
However, many business experts are advising longer privacy policies; once which outline exactly what your business will do to protect the privacy of others and what the customer should expect but is also obligated to do to remain secure. This document is not only important for building trust but is also a legal form that will outline exactly what the obligations of the company is in regards to privacy and what the obligations of the customer are. It’s a longer process, but it protects everyone.
Establishing trust between the potential customer and your business is incredibly important and something that is often glossed over. The landing page is the main tool of trust building; if the internet user doesn’t feel as though you are trustworthy from your landing page, then he or she won’t buy from you, it’s as simple as that. Therefore, your landing page should not just the place where you talk about your product or services and why you are better than everyone else, but also a place where you establish that you are a secure business that is fully deserving of trust from even the most suspicious web browser.
