Trust - It's a Major Selling Point
Posted On: 2007-01-12
It's also something that we've killed off in the adult industry
Over the centuries one important principle that mainstream business has learned is that customers need to trust you. They need to have faith in your business before they will buy anything from you.
Even in small remote towns where only one business might sell a vital product people would rather travel to the next place they can buy it than have to buy it from a local business they don't trust. And even in major cities businesses that lose the trust of their clients lose business and often go right out of business.
But if you can establish trust with your clients you can sell them just about anything sight unseen and they will still trust you to deliver the goods. Think back to the days of the Sears catalogs and you will see trust in action.
Those catalogs went out across America and all that potential customers could see of what they wanted to buy was a pretty picture. Yet they trusted Sears to deliver and so they bought from Sears and that company made a fortune out of their mail-order catalogs.
Today, many of us face a similar situation. We're selling things online and that means that people can't come into the store and touch, smell or even pick up the item to assess it. They can't even be sure that, once they have paid for the goods, we will deliver the items they have purchased.
So, if we're selling in mainstream there are things that we need to do to make the customer more comfortable about trusting us even before we make a sale. And it's quite possible to do just that.
In adult it's much harder to establish that trust because for years others who have gone before us have ripped people off, taken their money without providing the goods, rebilled the customers long after they wanted the billing stopped and generally taken advantage of the situation to make money in unethical and sometimes downright dishonest ways.
So if we in adult want to improve our sales then we have to try and overcome that distrust that was built up by others. We need to do everything we can to encourage people begin to trust us once more.
These days almost all of the sponsors do provide exactly what they promise and the days of rebilling members who really tried to cancel their accounts are almost gone. Sadly it took the threat of losing our ability to bill customers for the industry to clean up its act but at least that is now happening.
And all that is fine for the sponsors but perhaps there's more that they could be doing. There's also a lot more that affiliates could be doing because it's at the affiliate level that we can be encouraging our surfers to trust us.
In mainstream there are a number of things that you can do to establish trust. Not all of them are going to be options for us in adult but some could be worth thinking about. The mention of others might encourage you to think of other ways to encourage the trust that we so desperately need
So here are a few of the things that work for mainstream sites that need to establish some level of trust with their potential customers. As I've just said, not all of them will work here in adult but if you use your imagination they may spark some great ideas that you can use.
Colors and fonts
Colors and fonts are very important in establishing trust. Comic Sans rarely sends the right message for a mainstream e-commerce site. It may work in adult but when every Webmaster since Al Gore has used it then it's obviously losing it's credibility.
For a mainstream e-commerce site pastel colors are much more effective than bright glaring colors. Blues are particularly good and have long been known to arouse thoughts of reliability and maturity.
Shades of blue may also work in adult sites. Of course many adult sites insist on using black but once again, perhaps it's time to try something a little different.
Identify yourself
People like to know who they are dealing with and so it's important for mainstream e-commerce sites to show visitors the people behind the scenes. However there are very good reasons why clearly identifying yourself on an adult site may not be a very wise idea.
At the very least you could end up with a bunch of religious zealots camped outside your front door and at the worst you could have the local law enforcement agency looking for some cheap publicity.
But there are ways of identifying yourself in such a way as to remain anonymous but still encourage trust in your surfers. Perhaps try something like 'This site is brought to you by a husband and wife team who believe that there's nothing wrong in looking at consenting adults enjoying the sexual pleasures that the human race was meant to enjoy.'
There's more that you can do with that idea but I'll leave that up to you and your imagination.
Addresses and telephone numbers
In mainstream people like to have some point of contact if something goes wrong and nothing beats a telephone number ... unless it's a free-call telephone number. An address is also important because many people want something more than just a phone number
Once again, I would definitely not be putting my address or telephone numbers on any of my sites and I would not be putting my URL on any of my vehicles either. Don't laugh, I know of at least one adult webmaster who did just that and then wondered why the local child protection authorities were knocking on his door wanting to remove his children.
But all that's from an affiliate's point of view. Perhaps a phone number or an address might be more productive for many sponsors and before you laugh at that idea just remember that many of them may have to display their addresses somewhere on their website because of the requirements of the 2257 legislation.
There are some other ways that you might be able to encourage your surfers to trust you but I've waffled on long enough. Now it's time for you to let your brain cells do the work and decide if what I've talked about is of any use to you or not.
I'll be back on Monday, have a great weekend.