Useful Article on Building Trust on the About Us Page

I recently came across a helpful article on Search Engine Guide about ways to improve your About Us page. I had blogged about building trust and showing personality to increase conversions last July after reading a case study on MarketingSherpa, but the article from Stoney deGeyter is a great example.

In the article Stoney shows five elements you may wish to have on your About Us page:

• Company information such as founders and date formed. You can include links to your major product categories in the content or even to your top-sellers, but realize that the point here is to build trust and perhaps provide that last bit of persuasion that turns them from a shopper into a buyer, so don’t go overboard with the links.
• Team biographies: If you have a dedicated staff, you may wish to reinforce your unique selling proposition with these. Here is an example:

  Jimmy—owner. I started this company to provide the best selection of quality widgets found anywhere. We have grown tremendously over the past 5 years and are the #1 seller of specialized widgets. We owe our success to always providing the best selection and quality at a competitive price which has earned us a loyal group of customers. [insert link to your customer testimonials here]

  Favorite product: Super Wonder Wigdet. “I love the flexibility of this widget. It may cost a bit more but it really does the job of three other widgets.”

  Jenn—product buyer: My job is to hunt out the best widgets available so we can offer them to our loyal customers. We buy our widgets in bulk so we can afford to sell them at prices our competitors cannot match.

  Favorite product: Amazing Mini Widget. “I can’t believe how small this widget is. I can take it anywhere with me.”

  Jack—shipping manager: I manage the warehouse and shipping facilities. My job is to ensure we have the latest and most popular widgets in stock, most ready to ship within one business day. I ensure that we carefully inspect each widget before we ship it, and we take great care to pack your order safely but also quickly so you get your orders as soon as possible.

  Favorite product: “I like ‘em all. Don’t make me decide on just one.”

  Laurie—customer care: I manage our team of call center representatives. We are here between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. PST to answer questions. Our checkout is secure and your privacy is guaranteed, but we can also gladly take phone orders at 1 888 555-1212. I also ensure your satisfaction is guaranteed if you have any issues about your order or our return policy.

  Favorite product: Gourmet Widget “I’ll buy almost anything to help in the kitchen but if I could only have one tool to cook with, it would be the Gourmet Widget. No cook should be without one.”

  Now of course if you do not have a large staff for your business as you are just getting started, you can either play to that as a strength (We are not a big company so you will get more personal attention and we can ship your orders quicker) or you can not include specifics about company size and just speak in general terms about your policies, service, and mission.

• Mission statement: This one should be obvious. Sum up your reason for being in business. This is the place to set yourself apart from competitors by emphasizing what you do differently—what your unique advantages are, be it price, selection, speed of shipping, safe shopping, return policy.
• Content: Keep it current. Update your biographies as the team grows if needed. Show a picture of your latest warehouse or package wrapping station—if not a sheet of plywood between two saw horses.
• Related links: This should already be available, likely in your header or footer links, but you may wish to call these out specifically if you have pages or sections on pages with anchor links that address specific concerns shoppers may have, such as contacting you for ordering help, your return policy, your security/privacy information, or general questions.

So get cranking on those changes. With the holiday season already gearing up for merchants, you don’t want almost buyers to bail on your checkout if they are not sure what type of company to which they are getting ready to hand over personal and financial information.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business

OrderMotion Hosts Webinar on Utilizing Order and Customer Management Best Practices

OrderMotion will be hosting a webinar on Thursday November 8, 2007 at 2:00pm EST/11:00am PST. Every day small and medium-sized merchants end up losing customers because they are not prepared for the growth of their businesses. While juggling to manually fulfill orders many merchants are experiencing low customer satisfaction due to slow delivery, untimely response to requests and even lost orders. By following order and customer management best practices, merchants can significantly improve the efficiency of their operations and provide a superior shopping experience for their customers that will keep them coming back. During this informational webinar Kim Free, OrderMotion Senior Vice President of Product Strategy will share order and customer management best practices and the benefits of implementing order and customer management tools to more efficiently run your retail operations. Sign up for the webinar at OrderMotion.

1 Choice 4 Your Store Hosts Getting Open for Business Webinar

1 Choice 4 Your Store and Yahoo! Small Business will be conducting an Open For Business Webinar on November 7th at 2pm EST, 11am PST.

Join us live while we discuss the different aspects of opening your Yahoo! Store including:

• Design Wizard
• Add Product Wizard
• Payment Methods Wizard
• Tax Wizard
• Shipping Wizard
• and much more!

Sign up now for the webinar as space is limited!

We look forward to seeing you there.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business

SolidCactus to Host Webinar on New Cross-sell Features

SolidCactus will be hosting a webinar on Thursday November 8 focused on the new cross sell from Yahoo!

Among the topics covered will be a step-by-step walkthrough of setting up the new cross sell on your shopping cart and product pages, and utilizing all the tools offered with Cross-Sell Manager such as automatic suggestions and discounting.

The goal for SolidCactus with the webinar is to enable Yahoo! merchants to not only go live with this amazing new modification to the platform, but also maximize their results with increased average order value and conversion rates.

Also as part of this webinar, Solid Cactus will be giving away some free customizations to the cross sell that will help you match the visual appearance of the cross sell to the design of your store.

Webinar topics include:

• Setting up your new cross sell.
• Porting over your cross sell items from previous versions of Cross-Sell Manager.
• Previewing the cross sell display before going live.
• Cross sell variations:
  • Auto-suggest
  • Discounting
  • Manual setup
  • Combinations of variations
• Cross sell strategies
• Solid Cactus customizations (some are FREE)

Sign up for the webinar