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Originally published in SiteProNews, February 05, 2008

People trust other people more than websites. One of the biggest things that turn off people from buying online is the lack of human interaction and personality.

As said before, pictures of the author behind an ebook, the manager of the online store or the friendly faces of customer service staffers all help promote trust and increase sales.

Other ways to create trust using human presence online is to add testimonials to your site or include a discussion board. Testimonials show that your site and product have active customers that endorse it. A discussion community, if active, shows that you have customers and fans actively discussing your product.

Both these elements not only promote trust but help you bring in the "social acceptance" factor of sales. This simply means that people prefer to buy products that they know others are interested in - it's also called "following the crowd."

Lets take a look at how to use these human elements to build trust.

Using Images of Real People

Revealing the face behind the website is a great way to build trust. You can reveal:

• your own face if you manage the website and have a solid interest in the website's topic
• faces of the people handling customer support
• the face of the creator of the product you're selling

Think strategically when you are placing these images. According to eye studies, a human face on the web is a major attention drawer.

You should be very careful with where you place a picture of a human face. Faces added randomly can be detrimental as they draw attention away from important copy points like headlines.

Use faces to draw attention to important site elements like sign up boxes, order forms or testimonials - anything you WANT the visitor to look at.

Marketing Guru Alex Mandossian loves using the human face around sign-up forms. He believes that the combination of a virtual entity like a sign-up form combined with a real human face creates a powerful draw.

He calls this the "Sesame Street Effect" after the popular children's TV show.

On Sesame Street, the producers found that young children were most drawn to the TV screen when they saw shots with real live actors and virtual puppets together. Shots with just puppets or just live actors created less of an attention draw.

Mandossian uses this same principle when designing sign-up forms. You'll notice that his sign-up forms always include a picture of himself interacting with the sign up form. For a further boost of trust, include anecdotes about employees or bios of the site founders. If you can see the personalities - names or some biographical data - you can develop a greater sense of reliance and trust in the site.

Use photos of smiling people. If a person looks confident and happy it will be easier for the shoppers to relate to them and will lesson any natural distrust.

And if for any reason you don't want to use photos of your own staff you can buy webready pictures of smiling people from iStockPhoto.com for only $1 each.

Use Endorsements and Testimonials

Busy online communities help build trust through the principle of "social acceptance." In a nutshell, humans have a tendency to follow the crowd.

If you observe a lot of people talking about a product or using it, you conclude the product must be good. If you have an active newsletter with over 10,000 subscribers (or any other impressive number) state this on your site.

On the sign up form for your newsletter add text like "10,000 subscribers and growing." A simple statement like that builds trust.

If you have an online community, share recent community posts on your site. An active community tells a visitor that your site has a following and a product worth talking about. If you don't currently have a community, you can create one for free on Yahoo! Groups.

Yahoo! Groups provides an excellent email based discussion list. Make sure to make the list Public (this means people can view messages without having to sign up).

Bjorn Brands is a successfull enterprenuer who transitioned from having his own building company to a great online business. Check out his site and see for yourself how he can help you do the same at http://www.moneyacces.com

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