Improve conversion rates by being authoritative

When visitors have confidence in you or your product, they’re much more likely to convert. If your landing page is the first encounter a visitor has with your brand, you have to build confidence to win conversions. If you’re a well-known brand, you should leverage the credibility your name holds to skyrocket conversion rates.

In the READY framework for Conversion Optimization, ion’s president, Scott Brinker, lays out five ways to earn visitor confidence through establishing authority. Doing these five things will help you improve your conversion rates.

Establish authority by:

1. Explicitly providing assurances
2. Including concrete details
3. Respecting social norms
4. Harnessing social proof
5. Being brand consistent

Explicitly provide assurances

Be sure to include on-page guarantees or trust marks. These minimize the (perceived) risk for visitors, allowing them to feel confident about converting.

You can see Betty Crocker uses a “secured” badge on this landing page near the form where they will begin collecting personal data about the visitor. This helps reassure the visitor that they are sending their details, securely. If the visitor doesn’t feel confident about sending personal details via form, they won’t convert!

Include concrete details

Be as specific as possible when talking about examples, studies, illustrations, and so on. Concrete details that are backed up by verifiable numbers and messaging helps ease any anxieties your visitors may be feeling.

In this landing page example from Overland Storage, you can see they include concrete details about what the NEO 4100 includes. There’s nothing vague or fishy about the product or the white paper download that would make a visitor hesitant to convert.

Respect social norms

There are certain elements that almost every web page includes like a privacy policy and terms of use. Not including these can raise questions about your credibility, which will hurt your conversion rate. You can see both of the above examples respect these online social norms.

Harness social proof

Increase conversion rates by showing visitors that other people, just like them, are already using and enjoying your product or service. You can do this through testimonials, customer logos, awards badges or press logos.

This Intuit landing page does a great job of harnessing the power of social proof with their Media Buzz bar and customer videos.

Be brand consistent

Your web pages should also be brand consistent. If you’re a big brand, you’ll want to leverage the inherent credibility that comes with name recognition. If you’re a lesser-known brand, you want to build up awareness every chance you get! 

AG Interactive, the online division of American Greetings, does a great job of leveraging their well-known logo and name to gain credibility and improve conversion rates! 

If you’re like to take a deeper dive into the READY framework for improving conversion rates, you can check out the introductory post by Scott, or browse through our 5 directional cues for increasing landing page conversions post.

What do you think? Are your pages READY for conversion?