Do Visitors Feel Safe Buying From Your Website? If sales are down, it may just be that your website needs a revamp!
by Carrie Hinkel on March 27th, 2008
If you have a website, the best thing you can do for business is to make it look professional and safe for your customers. We’ve all stumbled upon websites that look like they were created years ago and have never been updated since- leaving potential customers to wonder if the company is even in business anymore. It’s doubtful anyone would feel comfortable placing an order and giving their personal credit card information to a website that looks shady. Here are some tips for making visitors feel safe and secure when they’re on your website.
Be sure your website looks up to date - Think of your homepage as the front door to your store. It should be professional, inviting and modern-looking. If your website looks old and outdated, then visitors will assume your products and services are too. Be sure to check your website often and remove out of date products or listings.
Set up a merchant account - While accepting Paypal may be easier and cheaper for you, it’s not exactly professional. It may leave visitors thinking twice about purchasing from your website and give them the incentive to go back on Google for another search. Having the ability to accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover doesn’t take much effort and there are plenty of companies that offer merchant account services.
Set up a “Contact Us” page - Many visitors want to know that there’s a real company behind a website before they order. So, offering as much information as possible will leave visitors feeling better about the reliability of your company. Email addresses should always have the address of the website and not @hotmail, or yahoo, gmail, etc. A phone number should never be your home phone number - having someone answer “hello” or having someone on a second line pickup and start dialing is a certain recipe for disaster. Stick with a call center, dedicated business line or even a cell phone. If you can, list the street address of your company. Remember, the more information you can give out, the more your potential customers will feel ready to become actual customers.
Make checkout easy - A true-tale sign of a new or small business is an archaic checkout process. Ideally, the your store’s checkout should be four or less steps. Keep it as simple and as short as possible, without asking customers to first sign up to be a member or requiring that they answer a set of unnecessary questions. Also, make sure that it’s easy for customers to look at their shopping cart and then continue to shop - otherwise, you’ll end up with frustrated customers who may leave your site for good.
It doesn’t take much effort to give your website a professional look that makes visitors feel at ease, never even questioning the reliability of your company or the safety of the website. You’ll be amazed at how just the look of a website can increase customers and decrease shopping cart abandonment rates.