## Need Help
## My results for August
## Credibility counts
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First off, I have several workshops coming up, and would like some
input from you if you don't mind. Feel free to elaborate if you want. I
am addressing people with sites wanting to do better. In your
experience:
What is the toughest part of doing business on the web?
What would you like to see more information on?
Just type your opinions and return this e-mail.
Thanks,
Ingvar.
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Then, as promised here are my results for the past 4 weeks:
I had 698 unique visitors to my site and I didn't spend a dime on PR.
Most came from the articles I got published, very few from search
engines. Of the 698 I received 67 responses (freebie critiques). That's
almost 10%. That's very good. Of those, I now have 3 customers, one is a
full fledged site re-do - and 4 good prospects. That means I am turning
about 5% of my visitors into clients. Not bad.
A lot better than spending the $1,500 I did in July with dismal
results!
So, in retrospect I think that "soft" PR works pretty good.
I also think that my site is coming along nicely, it seems to be
credible enough. I asked some of my colleagues about the site and
received several really valuable critiques incuding some very difficult
ones. Comments that made sense but were hard to implement. Goes to show
that when you create your own site you become proud of it and become
very biased.
It is important that you create a site that OTHERS like. No one cares
what YOU like!
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Being credible is important. Consumers are obsessed with what to
believe on the web. What's a scam? What might be a good deal? Is this a
basement operation or a credible company? Studies in web persuasion
(Stanford University) shows that credibility is probably THE key factor
in making web sites compelling.
What is credibility? It is the belief - or the PERCEIVED belief that
the company is:
TRUSTWORTHY and has EXPERTISE.
Highly credible sites have these two factors. If you can establish
that you can in fact be trusted, and you have the expertise to validate
what you are talking about you have a credible site. Or at least a
perceived credible site. Miss one of them and your site lose
credibility.
How do you establish credibility? According to the Stanford study you
have 4 types of credibility:
