9 Credibility Indicators to Increase Your Conversions

Each internet marketer wants to retain would-be buyers and increase conversions. But how to do that? How to earn customer loyalty? 

You will be amazed that credibility indicators can hand over customers’ trust and improve your website performance.

What is credibility?

The root of the word “credibility” is “credo” translated from Latin as “I believe”. Credibility is “the feeling of trust and respect that you inspire in others”.

Website credibility depends on the context of your target audience and your performance. Most of us carry out an uphill credibility battle ahead of the game every time a new client visits your website.

Implementing credibility factors on the site can improve trust with your audience, convert them into real customers, and get more sales.

In this article, I will cover nine credibility indicators that increase site conversions and build up a trustworthy touch with your audience.

1. Testimonials

You’ve heard that cliche a million times: actions speak louder than words. In relation to online business, customers’ words can speak louder than your actions and words. Adding testimonials on the website from your clients, influencers or other companies can convince your audience that you provide on what the person says you can.

SE Ranking, an all-inclusive marketing software, increased their sales by 34% after adding testimonials from SEO influencers and bloggers to the website.

Testimonials can have a greater impact if you include photos of happy clients, the name of a person providing the testimonial, and, ideally, a video whenever possible. Keep in mind that powerful influences speaking about their experience on your products can bring along a good amount of would-be buyers.

For the record, showing results, real numbers, and facts to your audience will increase more conversions. Notice that “76.48% increase in sales” will work better than “”76%” increase in sales. Because this number looks more real and shows your audience what were the results.

To add more credibility, you can create a separate Testimonials page where anyone can leave a note and let people know what other people think about your company. You can see how Web Developer Sydney has integrated this option:

2. Return Policy

The return policy is another credibility indicator that can increase site conversions. Let people know that you can easily return products. You will be impressed by how many new customers you can get by integrating the return policy.

For example, Space City Drones always provides their customers with the “Buyer Protection” visible on the product page. The red color icon convinces customers about a full refund in case they don’t get the order in time.

Try to figure out the reason for a product return and don’t charge costs for the return shipping. The best way to find out the reason is to make people reach you via phone. Every trustworthy website should list a phone number, and the best way to acquire one and manage calls is through a good phone system. Checking out what was wrong can improve a certain aspect and cut down the number of product returns.

3. Reviews

The global study by Neilsen figured out that 66 % of customers say that trust reviews posted online. Back then Express Watches got a 38% increase in sales by adding customer reviews on product pages using a small widget from Trustpilot.

Positive reviews, whether it’s star ratings or comments, convince customers to solidify their decision to buy a product. It is really important to provide balanced and omnifaceted reviews of your product or service. Too many positive reviews leave a bad taste in customers’ mouths.

People look through reviews in order to find useful information that is not advertised on the company’s website. Notice that an unbiased perspective will help you convert more leads and sales.

Really important: check out reviews and provide proper answers.

Ignoring customers and removing bad reviews will raise suspicion as a  fraudulent online business. Instead of this, you can transform it into a great possibility to show how you really care about your clients and add a touch of professionalism.

Let say you made a mistake and sent the product too late – 3 days than promised. How to transform an unhappy customer into a satisfied one? You can apologize, give a 10% discount on the following order and offer free delivery. The right approach to each customer will make you look like a serious online business that respects and cares about customers and always admits their faults.

4. Awards and Recognition

In the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln, “Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition”. The truth is that adding awards and recognition will give your business authority. As soon as you have authority, you will become more credible and influential.

In the e-commerce industry, it is a common thing to show all awards you’ve got in order to create a credible online business. You can use the portfolio of your clients and publish their name and logo like Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers does it:

Awards and recognition remind that your business is such a great one like you are in your site copy.  Showing users who your clients are will get a huge impact on customers’ minds. Just give people everything they want!

Magicdust is one web design company that wanted to increase conversions and added a badge “Happiness Guarantee”. After integrating this idea, their conversions skyrocketed by more than 56%.

Coming back to the idea of your actions speak more than words, awards are also a good way to do that. They add a degree of authority to your brand and increase trust and respect for your business.

5. Shipping options

Having an online business, you should really care about shipping options. Everybody wants to get their products or services in one piece and in a quick time. It is important to display your shipping options and taxes on your website from the beginning.

Showing wrong prices will make the customer feel betrayed and bounce the websitу for long. Try to deliver products on time and don’t be late. It would be better to deliver faster and make your client happier, wouldn’t it?

To increase the credibility rate, you can add shipping options on your product and cart page. Take a look at the example from Zappos that tells customers to shop with confidence as all information is encrypted with an SSL protocol. Moreover, they offer a free shipping and free returns option.

We know that no one likes paying for shipping. I consider that free shipping can improve the checkout process and make customers happier.

6. Social Connections

Social media is one of the strongest marketing tools to build your credibility and gather all inbound information. Social media dictates a large number of your social connections and target audience reach on different platforms.

If you have social media-enabled tactics, one of the first things to increase your trust will be to check out a number of social connections you have. Today most of the social networks show you how many friends follow you or share your page.

In the digital marketing industry, the bandwagon effect is much used where all actions of the audience are visible. Groupon is one great examples of that effect. Essentially, the product should reach a certain level of “bandwagon effect” until the deal itself becomes active.

7. Show trust marks

According to the Econsultancy study, when people asked how they decide to trust a website while shopping, 48% of interviewees answered: “The website shows trustmarks to reassure shoppers.”

 

We can consider that trustmarks prove that online business is quite authentic. But which trust marks are better to use? Based on the Actual Insights research, badges from well-known brands are quite effective. McAfee (79%), Verisign (76%), Paypal (72%), BBB (37%), TRUSTe (28%) are highly recognised by customers.

To solidify customers’ solutions, it is especially significant to show security seals at the payment process. Another good places include call-to-action buttons and next to your website’s links on search pages. Let customers know what the meaning of trustmarks and the benefit of it. Users don’t trust seals that don’t understand.

8. Discount codes and the total cost

Asking customers to remember discount codes or lead to some other page in search of codes and a price within the checkout process can not only disappoint your users but also leave your site forever.  To avoid this challenge, Jakob Nielsen recommends to “encode offers in special links embedded in your email newsletters and automatically transfer the coupon to the user’s shopping cart”.

Showing a price breakdown will help you clearly define the shipping dates, taxes, and the total cost of an order. This approach makes users be quick in decisions and cut down the bounce rate. You can integrate a “ZIP code calculator” to count the total cost of the product on the spot.

9. Customer support

Lately, the need of the customer support picks up steam more and more. It is important to give your customers every indicator to trust you and a clear customer support tactic will help you.

Today the customer service is more often mentioned in the eCommerce industry (16.7%). Based on the Dimension Research study, great customer service can be the number one influencing the level of trust in eCommerce industries.

There are different customer support ways: via phone, via email, via live chat, via skype, and via ticket system. Many customers want to get an instant answer to questions, that’s why it is important to have different options to satisfy their needs. Most people use live chat, it is free and easy to use.

Conclusion

Because of the abundance of scammers and malicious websites, customers become worried about buying products online. They need something that they can trust and feel safe online. That’s why it is important to create a strong sense of credibility on your site.

Farah and Casey say in their study: “Credibility influences a user’s interest in a website. Once users perceive the credibility of a website they will be more likely to use it.”

In this post, I have tried to create a good list of credibility factors that can help you increase authority and conversions. If you know other credibility indicators, tell me in the comments below.