9 replies to this topic

[Shep]

Last week I read an article somewhere that keeps running through my mind. (I don't remember where I read it.)
The articles stated that including personal information on your web site is not helpful. My thoughts prior to reading the article was that knowing a little about the owners of the business that I am considering doing business with would help me trust the owners better.
I once talked to a small motel operator and his web designer told him that you get 30% more business if you include your picture.
I certainly think it would make a huge difference what kind of web site you operate. When I look for books on the internet I really don't care a lot what kind of person runs the web site. On the other hand if I am going to spend a bunch of money on web designs for my web site, I would probably like to know a little about the personality of the designer.
I am working on 2 web sites that sell items that cost between $1,000.00 and $10,000.00. The web sites are the same product by different companies in different states. I had hoped to maybe get some leads from the internet that would show up at our showroom to check out our products. I am simply amazed that people would spend $5,000 or more on a product from a company that they never met. Our biggest internet sale was $7,000.00.
What is your opinions? Do you think customers would trust these companies more if we included pictures of the owners with his family and included a bit about them?
Also not sure if this is the correct category?

[air-dog]

I once talked to a small motel operator and his web designer told him that you get 30% more business if you include your picture.

I could believe that.

'Call Dave now for a quote'. I like this approach for a small business.

One of the things I would never do is deal with any company that provides a P.O box as their business address.

[deborah2002]

I know this seems like a stock answer, but it really depends on your target audience.

If Grandma is going to buy some knitting needles online, she would probably like to see your pic and know a little about you (".....reminds me of my grandson.....").

However, the sock suspender wearing CEO of a company who needs high end office furniture won'd give a hoot as to who you are and who your wife is.

I think it's always important to have an "about us" page, so people know a bit about your business, but how personal you want to get is really up to you and how well you know your audience.

Personally, I like to know a bit about the owner just so I can ascertain how much knowledge they have in their product/service. I don't necessarily need pictures, but then again, it all depends on the site I am on at the time.

This really turned into a 10 minute dissertation, so I'll cut it short.

deb

[Jill]

Welcome, Shep!

I think every company site should have an about us page, and certainly having photos there of the major people in the company can only help show you're real people.

The larger the company, the less personal you probably need to get. However, for a one-person company, I highly recommend getting someone personal so that people get to know you. The Web site itself may not always be the best place for this, but that's what email newsletters are great for!

If you reserve your about us page for the personal stuff, even the most stodgiest company should do fine.

Jill

[qwerty]

Apparently, it depends a lot on the image you want to portray. I made a page for the web site of my old company introducing the leaders of the various departments: the president, CTO, support manager, sales manager, and marketing director.

It had been up for about a week when they had me take it down. Why? Because that was all but three members of the company. They didn't want people finding out that the sales manager, support manager and marketing director were their respective departments, or that the president and CTO were the people taking a lot of the support calls and making the bug fixes. Personally, I disagreed with the decision, but it wasn't mine to make.

[bwelford]

I think it's important to show that you are dealing with real people, because there are so many companies that really do a poor job of meeting customers' needs. To an extent, the "real people" are showing their commitment to make sure you will get satisfaction by dealing with them.

Particularly for business-to-business emarketing, I think it's important to show that a potential customer is likely to be happy. For this, I suggest three elements that should be in a website. I have labelled these NBC - News, Bodies and Customers.

News shows that the company is alive and making things happen. Bodies is the people thing. Customers is testimonials from real live customers - they can be anonymous if preferred. This confirms that customers really do love the treatment they are getting.

Barry Welford

[Scottie]

I agree personal information is good to have, but does anyone have concerns about privacy and safety?

[Minerva]

It can be very hard to establish trust through a website, but people won't part with their money if they don't trust you, so it's worth some thought.

I wrote an article called "Do Customers Trust Your Website?" a few months ago --
http://www.businessk...t/trustsite.htm

I guess I had trust on the brain, because one of my clients wrote a book about trust and executives.

-Andrea-

[meta]

Why not ask yourself what kind of information you'd want to see? It's going to vary according to the situation. The appropriate information to share depends upon the audience, and there are always options.

Let's consider a name we all know. Jill establishes trust by sharing advice. If you think the advice is good, then you think Jill is good. She shares client stories. She attracts good moderators and members to her forum. All of these are ways in which she builds trust by sharing information about herself, both professional and personal. She also shares some more personal information about her family and other thoughts. There are many ways to give others a sense of who you are, and who your business is, in order to build trust. If there is certain information that you are hesitant to share, chances are that you can find some equally good alternative.

Keep in mind that if you position yourself and your experience as the offering, or the basis for trust in your offering, you need to provide clear information explaining who you are. I recently read a promotional piece with this kind of offering, where the person identified herself by first name only - at least I think it was her first name. There is no chance on this green earth that I will buy her service.

[Scottie]

I talk briefly about personal info in an article, Making Sales on the Internet. As Meta said, in some industries it is appropriate to add personal info, in others it's not.

It's important if you do have personal info, to be careful not to go too far. Religious beliefs for one thing, seem to polarize people. You can land some customers because of them or you can drive people away. It's important to be aware of the "Christmas-card-brag-letter" image and try to avoid that- try to relate your personal info to things that will build credibility for what you are selling.

For example, if you are selling nebulizers because your children were always sick and you found that this certain brand really helped, that's a great testimonial. If you are selling home furnishings, your audience doesn't need to know your children were sick all of the time.