COMMENTS
Thanks for the ideas -- testimonials and privacy policy are great! Happy and honest customers are what drive business success.
Good customer service is the lifeblood of any business. Without customers service, the business can not go up according to its desires. We can offer promotions and slash prices to bring in as many new customers as we want, but unless we can get some of those customers to come back, our business won't be profitable for long.
Good customer service is all about bringing customers back.
This enforce is appreciable.
Billy, this is a hugely important topic -- but I do have a problem with the Better Business Bureau. See: http://bit.ly/trusttrus
Though to be honest, I don't have a good alternative to the BBB. Any ideas?
I've been playing around with my sales pages a bit lately. I've always tried including comments and testimonials. It's tricky finding the right context to use the comments. It seems like it's important to hit on the key benefits the target customer is looking for.
One example recently came from a client. I'm a blogger for businesses and the comment was in regard to how I dig into the topics businesses write about for their blogs. I thought it touched nicely on how some businesses have concerns about bloggers not knowing enough to write effective posts. The comment seemed to work well to address that potential concern.
We'll see if it works to improve conversion for the landing page.
Pictures of the staff are very useful unless you want to look anonymous. The www is faceless enough so get clicking!
Do not show your personal bank statement, video testimonial is more powerful.
Trust symbols do play a key role in gaining the credibility for the landing page.
I really like the one to two sentence privacy policy explanation idea. I think that could really be beneficial if it's written well enough. What have you guys found to be some of the most effective text for that?
Consumers are very weary of where and to whom they are giving their information to, so it can be hard creating a landing page that you know will be filled out with the correct information. Besides including fewer fields, and using appending services for information, you need to create landing pages that ensure the consumer their information is going to be handled securely. This will ensure they fill out correct
For landing pages, it is best practice to do all of the above. It is especially important that your company be very explicit on their privacy policy. Incidents like the recent security breaches degrade industry trust in cloud solutions. That’s why Marketo is working to help the entire industry to improve their practices.
For more information on Marketo's stance on security go to: http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2011/04/marketo%E2%80%99s-stance-on-security.html.
@Heather Thanks, I totally agree that happy customers can lead to even more happy customers over time and is a critical thing to display proudly throughout your website and landing pages.
@Mitra Absolutely, customer service is key to any businesses survival and growth.
@Barret I hadn't seen that article until now, but I'm glad you brought it up. Althogh I feel as though the BBB is still legitimate it's important to keep up to speed on anything that's going with these different organizations.
@Dayne Great point about using it through blogging and adding legitimacy behind the post. The more people blogging these days the more the information can get diluted which is why it's so important to create remarkable content!
@Spill Understanding that people may/may want to read the entire policy is key so maybe experiment with a few sentences of the policy or a link and see what works better.
@Steve I personally like the two sentence policy. Usually this will do the trick and keep them on the page instead of linking to the separate privacy policy page.
Billy, a lot of people feel like you that although BBB has many instances of what might be considered corruption, that it's still legitimate. I heard Kim Komando on the radio outline a case of BBB malfeasance the other day... at the end, she still said she thought the BBB was on the up and up.
I respectfully disagree.
My opinion: Even if BBB has the best of intentions, their business model is hopelessly outdated. Their members PAY to be rated. They seem to have no control over their local affiliates. BBB ought to be more like Consumers Union (Consumer Reports parent), which takes no money from the companies they review.
Like they say, follow the money. Consumer Reports is answerable to the people who use the reviews. BBB is answerable to the companies they review. It's a hopeless situation. BBB may be a useful tool today, but it is inherently unfair. Within a year or so, everyone will know this.
The # 1 way that I believe helps drive traffic is word of mouth from other customers. Getting the first few customers can be tough.