Customer Anxiety Down, Conversions Up

Notes from the MarketingExperiments.com (MEC) webinar “Site Design Tested: 7 ways to increase site conversion by reducing customer anxiety” by Dr. Flint McLaughlin

UPDATE:* Marketing Experiments has released a “Brief” of the Webinar “Site design tested Reducing Customer Anxiety.”

Wikipedia defines Anxiety as an unpleasant complex combination of emotions that includes fear, apprehension and worry, and is often accompanied by physical sensations such as palpitations, nausea, chest pain and/or shortness of breath.

Target: MarketingExperiments.com

This is not the emotional state you want your users to be in when they hit your order form, so what can you do to reduce anxiety? Grab the dial and turn up the certainty, serenity and tranquility.

1. Testimonials – Use only customer testimonials that resolve anxiety or provide answers to customer service related questions. For example a testimonial regarding the ease in which a customer was able to cancel a subscription or return an item would be great right next to the submit credit card data.
2. Language and Tone – Talk to your users in a way they can understand. McLauglin warns not to get cute, make sure you are aware of and communicating with your audience. Gem gleamed from today′s webinar “People don′t buy from Web sites, they buy from people.”
3. Credibility Indicators – When you don′t know the company from Adam a little credibility from BBB or TRUSTe can go a long way.
4. Site Ratings – Leverage your site ratings from Bizrate, Nextag or any other legion of site rating services. A high rating tells your customers that they are certain to receive impeccable customer service.
5. Guarantees – Give your customers piece of mind with a guarantee. McLauglin urges you to never be satisfied with the wording of this crucial trust building tool and encourages you to test and retest your guarantee language ad nauseum.
6. Anxiety-reducing site features – Prominently display links to your contact info, about us and support information. No small business wants to field support calls all day but the trust you build by placing a phone number on your site is huge, it says to your customer, “I′m available to hear your concern.” Gem number two: In online commerce ”customer service is a marketing expense.”
7. Colors and Themes to match your product – Communicating visually with your customer has a real impact on your conversion rate, color matters it really does.

Take this list and run your current conversion process through it. There are pearls of wisdom here if executed well can greatly reduce customer anxiety and that′s good news for your bottom line.

What does reduced anxiety look like? Check out my redesign of Volusion′s credit card form .

If you are interested in reducing customer anxiety Suimple can help. Sign up for our Quickly Redesign service or contact us to find out how we can increase your customer conversions.

*The man behind all the research is Dr. Flint McLaughlin of MarketingExperiments.com (MEC). MEC is a wellspring of information for anyone interested in optimizing their site for increased conversions. If you can think of it they have tested it and have the results on offer for the small fee of your email address. Go check them out at http://www.marketingexperiments.com/