While getting your content found is great, it doesn’t matter much if it doesn’t convert visitors…meaning, someone finds your site, looks around and maybe even has an item sitting in their shopping cart but in the end decides to close down and leave your site.
What makes someone do this? Why do they seemingly go through all the steps just to get cold feet at the end?
For a multitude of reasons, people get scared and close down the sale. Perhaps there’s a troll, as this Copyblogger article suggests, that scares prospects away just when you’re about to close in on a sale/conversion.
One reason may be fear of wasting money. How many times have you bought something only later to feel you wasted your money? You spent your hard-earned money on a product or service just to find the claims were exaggerated and it didn’t do anything to solve your problem.
Remember those crafty guys at the fair who convinced you to spend all your spare change on throwing softballs at cans to win some stuffed animal? You’d try and try until you were all out of money with nothing to show…a waste of money indeed.
Another reason conversions may be choked off at the last minute is the fear of mockery. How many times have you seen this wonderful product advertised and told everyone you knew about it? You could hardly contain your excitement that this was it and as long as you could get your hands on one, everything would be okay.
But once you got it, you find out it’s not exactly what you hoped for or expected…the result? All those people you raved to start joshing you some about it, making you feel embarrassed about talking up this wonderful gizmo you acted like was going to radically change your life.
Another cause for mistrust and reason a conversion may fail is the fear of feeling stupid. After falling for some sleazy sales-job a few times, our guard is up more when all of a sudden something comes along promising the world that’s too hard to ignore. If one believes the hype, they may feel stupid later on for falling for it.
So indeed there is a troll and his name is fear.
How do you combat this fear and reassure customers your products or services are what you say they are and do what you say they will do?
Trustworthiness, transparency, credibility and high-value content is how you combat this fear, which you need to defeat in order to turn your site into a revenue generating machine.
All pages on your site need to show you can be trusted. Include real contact information and a photograph. Include a BBB logo, anti-hacker and industry logos in your shopping cart areas. Include an FAQ that answers common questions and include clear calls-to-action.
Unless you’re selling to kids, many visitors to your site have been burned in the past and are skeptical. They need reassurance they’re spending their hard-earned money wisely (especially in a down-trodden economy like this one).
Conversions are what really count – not how much time someone spent on your page or which ones they look at. Without conversions, your website will never generate revenue for your business.
Therefore, you need to identify what your customers’ fears are and reassure them your company is legitimate and your products will be an effective use of their money.