This is part 1 of a 3 part series called “We all feel safer being part of something bigger”.
Safety plays a big part in e-commerce. Customers want to know their credit card details are safe and their order is going to arrive in good time and order. Your visitors need to feel safe buying from your website!
Don't let visitors know you are a one-man-band, appear big!
We all feel safer being part of something big!
Obviously you can’t just get yourself lots of employees and a warehouse - but there are lots of ways to make yourself appear like a larger company to potential customers!
Here are 5 ways to instantly make yourself appear to be a bigger company:
- Change the words you use on your ‘Contact Us’ page. For your email put “Send an email using the form below and a member of our team will get you back to you very shortly”. And if you have a phone number put “Call our sales team to get an answer to your question right away!”. If you havent got a phone number there is more on that in the 2nd post of this series.
- Put impressive numbers on your ‘About Us’ page or sidebar section (don’t lie though!). You can say things like “our website receives over 30,000 unique hits every month”, this sounds better than “our website receives around 5,000 visitors per month”. Put total hits, not unique visitors as it is always much higher. You can also put other things like when you are explaining why it is good to buy from you, at the end of a sentence put “that is why thousands of customers trust us”. Even if the reality is that you only get 10 orders per week but have been trading for 3 years, you have still had thousands of customers, just its taken years to get them.
- Make sure all grammar is perfect. You don’t want a single spelling mistake, any bad english or general bad presentation (use of paragraphs, bold text, italics, bullet points etc). The more professional your text looks the more professional it makes you look. And professionalism is generally associated with larger companies.
- Get your face on your website! A great way to build trust is to put on your “About Us” page a section about you. Put a smart photo of you, maybe in a suit or at least looking smart with a nice smile on your face. Then put a short paragraph in first person EG “Hi, I’m Bertie and I’m the Director of extremesportstuffonline.com. I love extreme sports and being part of a business where the product is also my passion is great. I’m very proud of the products we sell and service we provide and hope all the great products you buy from us meet your exact standards. If they don’t one of our team is always just a phone call away. You can also send a personal feedback email directly to me at bertie@extremesportstuffonline.com! Keep loving extreme sports! Regards, Bertie Bertimus.” I’m sure you get the idea anyway, it definitely gives the business a feeling of size and also shows the top boss of a website cares about his customers and the products.
- Make sure important pages are visible, even if its at the bottom of your web design. Pages like “Terms & Conditions”, “Privacy Notice” & “Disclaimer” all show your visitors you are a serious business and operate on the right side of the law. You can also create pages like “Jobs”, “Corporate”, “Advertise” & “Press” and then put small holding content on them. I’m sure you will have seen links to these sorts of pages so many times on large ecommerce websites, but how many people would actually click them - virtually none! And having the links gives the impression of a large company!
