Website Usability Published date: September 21, 2006 Credibility wins clients over Improve your website credibility Adriana Iordan, Web Marketing Manager, Avangate B.V. Website Usability, Published date: September 21, 2006 You need to ask yourself what you could do to impress your website visitors and make them buy software from you, and not from your competitors. So, what can you do? The most important thing in convincing buyers, especially new ones, to shop on your site, is to add credibility to it. Here are a few tips on how to improve your website credibility and sell more software: Show that there really is a company behind the website. You can do that by adding information about your organization (telephone number, physical address), company values and philosophy, photos and biographies of the management team, historical timeline and milestones. Present easily verifiable information. You can increase your website credibility by making it easier for readers to verify the accuracy of the information you present, by providing citations and references and by linking to these. It shows confidence. Keep your news page up to date. It's hard to have trust in a website that has year-old news, or even few-months old. Also update the content of your website and revise it from time to time. Post anything that can prove your good knowledge of the industry you're in. If there are experts' opinions about your site or products, make sure you post them visibly on the page. Give credentials to any contributors, especially if they are authorities in the field. If you are part of an important organization, let people know about it. Don't link to sites that are not credible, because it ruins your website's credibility too. © 2007 Avangate B.V. www.avangate.com page 1 Website Usability Published date: September 21, 2006 Describe all your products, using as many details as possible. Giving your clients all the information they need leads to bigger shareware sales. Set up a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page, in case they need additional information. Also make sure you provide an efficient feedback and questions form. Use a professional designer to build your website. You know the first seconds are the most important ones when meeting someone for the first time. It's also true for websites: most people judge the credibility of a website by the first visual impact. Pay attention to layout, typography and consistency. Always remember you are building the website to sell shareware, so the design should match the purpose. Professionalism also resides in the language you use. Be clear, make sure there are no spelling mistakes, and be direct. The website should be easy to use. You want to sell as much shareware as possible, not make people wait while the heavy graphics load. You can make dazzling things with web technology, but they are not exactly useful to the business you are trying to run. Don't use ads and avoid splash pages and pop-ups. They are just plain annoying and they drive people away. Regularly check all your links, to make sure they are still active. If you are leading clients to nowhere, you will lead your sales to nowhere too. A client list could also be useful. Post positive feedback from your clients, because it gives more security to new clients. You can also add product test and case studies. Place confidentiality policy and copyright notes in a highly visible place on the page. Finally, you have to remember one thing: people will trust you with a whole bunch of information, including their office or home address, their telephone numbers, and most importantly, their credit card information. Having a couple of credibility points above the competition is definitely going to help your sales. *** © 2007 Avangate B.V. www.avangate.com page 2 Website Usability Published date: September 21, 2006 Sign up now for the Avangate Digest Newsletter to keep in touch with the latest trends in the software industry, to find out what the top software people say and recommend, and to get access to resources about shareware industry tools and techniques. E-mail this to a friend *** Copyright © 2007 www.avangate.com all rights reserved. This article was written by a Web Marketing Executive at Avangate B.V. The author has in depth knowledge of internet marketing services and website analysis applied to the software industry and ecommerce development. This article may be reproduced in a website, e-zine, CD-ROM, book, magazine, etc. so long as the above information is included in full, including the link back to this website. Please e-mail at articles@avangate.com, before using the article. *** About Avangate B.V. Avangate B.V. provides solutions for electronic software distribution and reseller management, assisting software companies worldwide in successfully selling their products online and at the same time efficiently managing a distribution network. The company’s offer includes an eCommerce platform incorporating an easy to use and secure online payment system plus software marketing services and additional marketing and sales tools such as an affiliate network, automated cross selling options, software promotion management, real time reporting, 24/7 shopper support, and the myAvangate reseller management program specifically designed for software sales. More information can be found on the corporate website, at www.avangate.com Avangate B.V. Van Heuven Goedhartlaan 937, 1181 LD Amstelveen, The Netherlands Tel: +31 208908080 Fax: +31 202031309 Web: www.avangate.com Email: info@avangate.com .member of GECAD Group, delivering innovative IT solutions Worldwide since 1992 © 2007 Avangate B.V. www.avangate.com page 3