How To Get Visitors To Trust Your Web Site

Writen by Graham Jones

When you are standing in a store, looking at MP3 players and deciding which one to buy, it's not always the place you'd imagine you would be faced with the issue of how you trust people on the Internet. But that's exactly what happened to me yesterday.

I was in a large store in my home town of Reading, UK, looking for a hi-fi that would play MP3s and CD-RW. Behind me was a display of new plasma screen TVs. Now my plan was to look for the shape and size of hi-fi that appealed to me, then come home and find the cheapest price online. That clearly wasn't the plan for the couple behind me looking at the plasma screen TVs.

"Shall we get it?" the young woman asked her partner. "Why not?" he said, "It's a lot of money but at least we know if it goes wrong we can bring it back to the shop and they can deal with it. You can't do that on the Internet. At least in this shop I can look into the salesman's eyes and see if he's telling me the truth."

It's worthwhile reflecting that in spite of the huge success that many people have selling things online, most people do not buy from the Internet. Most people, like the man I overheard in the shop yesterday, would rather buy from a 'real person'.

Indeed, I came back from my shopping expedition yesterday to discover an email from someone on my mailing list. "Thank you for trying to sell me your ebook," he said, "but I've done a considerable amount of research about these things and I now know they are all a complete scam."

Trust - that's the issue Internet marketers have to face online. When we are face to face with a person trying to sell us something, we use body language, vocal cues and a host of other triggers to almost instantly determine whether or not we trust someone. Online, we don't have that opportunity. The psychological cues we rely on to determine trustworthiness do not feature on the Internet, which means we are much less likely to buy online.

Research on how we determine the trustworthiness of an individual has shown a surprising result. The main reason for saying someone can be trusted is not their apparent honesty. Instead, it is simply how much they appear to like us. The more someone shows they care for us, the more we trust them – even if they are actually lying.

For people trying to sell things online this means you need to make your web site more personal and use things like video and audio to create a greater personal connection with your visitors. It also means being up-front with customer service issues, like guarantees, returns and so on. You could also consider using scripts that allow you to include the visitor's name in the page they are viewing. The more personal you make the visitor's experience, the more they will be able to use their inbuilt psychological trust analysis system. And that means more business for you.

Graham Jones is a psychologist who has investigated the way people use the Internet. His research can help you make the most of the Internet, particularly if you are hoping to make money online.