Have you ever heard the term “snake oil salesman?” This refers to the practice of trying to bombard someone with hype in order to get to lower all your natural defenses, so that you purchase a product or service that you might otherwise not have considered. This kind of approach goes back hundreds of years and has been partly responsible for developing a typical consumer’s distrust for salesmen of any kind. Very few people like the hard sell approach and most often run the other way from it. As a web-based sales person, why would you consider taking that stance when you design your website?
One of the primary challenges of Internet marketing in general is that you do not have the option of being able to look a customer in the eye and engage him or her with a handshake. This traditional means of interaction can often help to build a bond of trust between two individuals and can often lead to the consummation of a sale. The challenge facing the webmaster is to reproduce this element of trust virtually and every word that you write on your website goes a long way toward or against this goal.
If you listen to so called copywriting “gurus,” some of them will tell you that you have to be hard-hitting and that you have to be very graphic with your examples and use a lot of hyperbole. Yet we are seeing a definite trend away from this, especially as the social media phenomenon takes hold and becomes an integral part of Internet marketing. Now, more than ever, it is necessary to establish a process of trust before anyone is likely to buy something from your website.
To be as effective as possible, the website of today must strike a fine line between technical optimization and personal appeal. We all know that it is necessary to structure a site so that the search engine robots can determine, according to the algorithms, that the site falls into a certain subcategory or niche and is appropriate for distribution through associated channels. However, it should never be obvious to the web visitor that the site has been optimized in this way. Long gone are the days when you could simply insert “long tail” keywords to an excess density. You must include your appropriate keywords, but you must focus equally as well on secondary keywords or appropriate words and phrases from an SEO perspective. What this boils down to is simply writing educational, informative, enlightening and entertaining material, to give the visitor a real sense that they are spending their time wisely by staying on your page and reading the content.
As you establish trust through gentle repetition or endorsement, the visitor will feel more inclined to consider purchasing from you. Web copy that is sensational and designed to bully somebody into purchase will likely not work for you. Avoid copy modifiers that are designed to overstress certain points and remember to talk on an “adult” to “adult” basis, rather than if you were a “parent” talking to a “child!”
How have you established trust with your consumers?
Matthew Toren
