The best way to attract customers to your business is to make them understand what sets you apart from the competition. Home page of your website is a great place to start by listing your company s strengths and why you are better than your competitors. Back up your claims with evidence on rest of the website.
There are several things you can include on your web site to highlight great performance and build credibility.
Customer Testimonials
Testimonials are the best way of establishing your credibility and to tell the world that your products and services work as promised. Include testimonials from satisfied customers about how their lives were improved by your product or services. Personalize these messages with customer names, locations and photos. If you can get testimonials from known sources such as magazines and newspapers or industry leaders, you can have an even greater impact on potential customers. Remember to display the best testimonials on your home page and the rest on a separate testimonials page.
Testimonials have a considerably positive effect on visitors because they have been written by a third party and provide an unbiased view about your company and its products.
FAQ and About Us Pages
On your FAQ Page, list the most frequently asked questions and answers. This page helps you save time and resources that would otherwise be spent on answering common queries on the phone or via email.
The purpose of an ‘About Us’ Page is to give your visitors an idea about you, your business, its goals, and the company staff. Add personalized messages and photos of yourself and your staff on this page to assure your customers that they are dealing with real people.
Full Contact Information
An important step in establishing your credibility and genuineness is to provide visitors with your full contact details, including phone number, fax, address and e mail address. This information should be available in an easy to find place on your site. Even better, include your phone number and e mail address on every page.
News and Announcements page
On this page, include press releases and news information about your business and industry. Displaying positive news from third party sources helps establish credibility. Show an abstract of the news and provide links to the source. Alternatively, you can seek permission from the media source to display these articles. Also get permission for displaying their logo, so that customers can easily identify the source of the story.
Newsletters
You can send out emails and e newsletters to your current and prospective customers. Give a brief write up about the news and a link to see the full article.
Offline Publicity
In addition to promoting your business and website online, use offline advertising methods as well. For instance, get your local newspapers to publish an article about the coverage you got in national media.
Video
Online video is a great way to highlight your company’s strengths, conduct virtual tours, and demo products and services. If the videos are good, other sites may also agree to host them thus increasing your reach. To have the greatest impact, make sure the videos have a professional look and feel to them.
Use these tools to establish credibility, educate your customers about your business, and make a connection with them. Tell them an interesting and credible story, back it up with great products and services and they will start to spread the word about your business.