Close your eyes and imagine in your mind’s eye you are walking down the street. On a brick wall you see the picture of the exact pair of shoes you have been searching for! What luck. Next to the picture is a little slot that reads “Insert $50 here, the shoes will arrive at your home in 7-10 business days.” As farfetched as that sounds, it is precisely what online shoppers face every single day. They cannot see you, so they need something else to have enough in the people that want them to hand over their credit card number.
A simple way to build trust and reduce the friction a shopper encounters on the road to make a purchase is to use icons with trusted brands. Here are three every sales page should have:
1) Payment Security
This can be in the form of a “PayPal Verified” icon, an SSL certificate, hacker safe certificate, etc. Let the visitor know how their payment will be handled and use trusted icons to build confidence in the process.
2) Business Credibility
Common icons here include the BBB seal or honest-e online seals that simply say, “we are not shady, in fact, we can prove it because if you click on this seal a third party will verify that we act honestly with our customers.”
3) Delivery Reliability
If you are shipping a physical product to your customers, what better way to borrow some brand equity than to display the UPS, USPS, DHL, or Fedex logo on your website (with permission of course). These companies all have rules about logo use, but are all eager to let your website help them brand their company…while lending you some needed trust for your visitors as well.
