Reassuring Your Customers Amid The Failures
By Kim Wingate   ©2004 All Rights Reserved

We are all aware of how important it is to secure our customers' purchase information from a technical perspective. We also know that it is important to alert our prospects to the technical security measures that we employ on our sites. But, the technical aspects of security are only a part of the prospects' current concerns.

Prospects are concerned about the security of their purchases from a business perspective as well. They want to know that the company they order from today will be there tomorrow. People are concerned that they aren't just slipping their credit card information through the "mail slot" as the company closes its doors. Customers want to know that the order they are expecting to arrive next week will actually arrive, and not just end up as a line item in some bankruptcy document. The media fervor over recent high-profile dot-com closures will surely have an effect on customer conversion and sales. Closures and layoffs will no doubt give prospective customers reasons to pause. To top it off, the media is not only reporting on actual failures, they are reporting on "anticipated" failures. How many orders did some of the major e-tailers miss this holiday season because the media was projecting the possibility of that e-tailer's future demise? So how do we calm these fears and re-assure our prospective customers? By addressing the issue head on, of course. Don't beat around the bush with your prospects and hope they get the point. At the most, you only have a few minutes to convince your prospects before they move on. Tell them you'll be around and provide evidence to support your claim of stability. For example, you could drive this message home on a "Why Buy >From Us"-type content page. Through this type of page, you could provide all the evidence a prospect might need. Your "Why Buy From Us" page would, of course, contain the key differentiating information about the quality of your products and services, your price competitiveness, etc., but the evidence of your stability would also be prominently featured. A major bullet point on this page could actually be "Stability." Under this bullet, you could provide evidence to support the claim. Your stability as a company can be supported by communicating:

• How many years you've been in business.
• Who some of your major customers are.
• What your future plans are.
• Financial numbers, if public.
• Your position in the industry.

The point is, prospects need to know that you'll be around tomorrow. They need to be assured that you aren't on the verge of becoming another headline. In today's environment, prospects are more likely to become customers if you can provide the evidence to convince them that yours is a stable company.

, founder of AvidSurfer, is the publisher of Web business case studies, reports, and manuals. A real-world case study showing how a six hours of "tweaks" at one dot-com yielded $13,500 per day in additional sales is FREE for a limited time!
http://www.avidsurfer.com/default.asp?src=artm

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