Читать книгу The Trust Factor - Garrett M.D. Pierson - Страница 4

Ice cream. Everybody loves it.

In fact, it’s so popular that every day vendors across the world drive all around cities and towns, selling it out of their trucks and vans.

So, let me ask you a question. Let’s pretend for a moment that the two ice cream vans below sold the exact same type of ice cream. If both of these vans drove through your neighborhood, which one are you more likely to buy ice cream from?

If your experience has been anything like mine, you’ve probably seen your fair share of dilapidated ice cream vans like the van on the left, driving uncomfortably slow down your street. My kids are constantly begging me to buy ice cream from them but I usually refuse to do so because the vans always look so shady.

But here’s the interesting thing. I would let them buy an ice cream from the van on the right without hesitation. Why? Because it looks trustworthy.

That’s TRUST Factor #1 - Perception is Reality.

You see, our lives are based on our own individual view of reality - how we see the world. It doesn’t matter if our perception is based on fact or fiction; we still base our decisions on it.

For example, my wife hates roller coasters and thrill rides where she feels like she is not in control. Why? Because when she was about four years old, her mother took her on the Matterhorn at Disneyland and proceeded to scream bloody murder the whole time as if they were both going to die. She permanently traumatized my wife and changed her perception of what it was like to be out of control. This perception was further ingrained every time her mother would retell the story of their ‘near-death’ roller coaster experience and how she should have never taken her helpless four-year old on that ride. (Just for the record, I love my mother-in-law. She just made a mistake that had unintended consequences.)

Contrast that with my children’s experience. I love roller coasters. So when my kids were young I would tell them that as soon as they turned five, I was going to take them on the roller coaster with me. They were so excited! I knew that the first roller coaster ride would make all the difference, so I made sure to play it up all the way onto the ride, during the ride, and especially as soon as the ride was over.

I remember looking at my kids as they got off their first roller coaster; their little bodies shaking from the adrenaline, still in shock. Intentionally, I would totally play it up, saying things like “Wasn’t that awesome? Remember how exciting it was when we suddenly dropped down and then went through the loopty-loops? Let’s do it again!” I intentionally fed them with positive reinforcement because I wanted them to love roller coasters as much as I do. And it worked! My kids love roller coasters and they beg me every year to take them to the amusement park.

Isn’t it interesting how we can influence people’s decisions and their perception of reality? The truth is that our perceptions are constantly changing. Every time we experience something new like read a book, watch the news, or talk to a friend, spouse, or co-worker, we affect our reality.

Here are some other real-world examples of how perception affects our reality...

- Chainsaws at spook alleys. We all know that there isn’t a chain on the chainsaw, but it’s still as scary as hell.

- Superstitions. Have you ever had a friend who never washes his lucky basketball socks? Do you know someone that goes through a specific ritual every time his team plays away games?

- Groups at school. Have you ever dreaded being asked to get into groups because you thought that nobody would want to be in your group?

- Diamond rings. Why is it that somehow our love for our wives is directly proportionate to the size of diamond ring we buy her?

- Bad neighborhoods. Do you avoid driving in particular neighborhoods because you heard rumors or stories about it, or because it appeared to be run down?

The point here is that our entire lives are built around perception. Here’s another example that directly relates to your business.

- Buying online. Have you ever decided to not buy a product from a particular website because the site didn’t look credible, and then bought it from another website that did? Just like the ice cream vans, people are much more likely to buy from a website that looks professional, credible, and trustworthy over one that doesn’t appear to have these characteristics.

Did you notice how I used the word “looks” both times I mentioned the ice cream truck example?

The interesting thing about perception and trust is that something only has to “look” or appear trustworthy in order for people to initially trust it.

Fortunately, in the case of most businesses, those that look credible usually are, but not always.

There are cases where a website can look like a million bucks and yet have an ineffective or low grade product, or even worse, be a scam. If you want to see an example of this, just type in the term HYIP in Google and see what comes up. HYIP stands for High Yield Investment Program and every single one of them are ponzi schemes (warning: if you do a search for HYIP in Google, please don’t get sucked in. They can be very compelling.) Unfortunately, the people behind them are getting so good at making their sites look credible and professional that they can deceive even the most conservative, careful investors.

To prove my point, even I got tempted to sign up for an HYIP when I was doing research on this chapter. I clicked on a HYIP ad in Google that showed a 45% ROI per year, (which is on the low end for what many of them claim) and as soon as the website loaded, it had Yahoo Finance logos, it talked about the FDIC, the FOREX market, truth in savings disclosures - the works. My spider senses were tingling, telling me to run, but it looked so compelling that I had a hard time leaving the site. I think it’s human nature to try to get something for nothing. Unfortunately it rarely ever works out to our benefit. This is just another example of how our perception can affect our reality.

Okay, I’ve got one more really good example before I drive the point home.

Do you drink bottled water? Statistically, the average American drinks 167 single-use plastic water bottles each year, 86% of which go directly into landfills. So why do we drink bottled water? Because it’s healthier than tap water, right? That’s what most people would tell you.

The reality is that this generally isn’t the case - especially in the US. In fact, several studies have been done and in many cases tap water is just as safe as bottled water. Ironically, several of the larger bottled water brands are nothing more than treated municipal tap water. Even in New York City, the water is just as clean as bottled water.

Case in point, back in 2005, 20/20 did a segment on bottled water. They took a sample from a drinking fountain in the middle of New York and compared it to five major bottled water brands, namely Evian (from France), Aquafina, Iceland Spring (from Iceland), Poland Spring, and American Fare (Kmart’s low cost brand), and when the results came back, there was no difference in water quality between the bottled water and water from the drinking fountain.

Okay, so if bottled water isn’t any healthier, maybe we drink it because it tastes better? We’ll 20/20 thought the same thing, so they took it even one step further and did a blind taste test. Surprisingly, the cheap American Fare Kmart brand won, followed by Aquafina (aka ‘filtered’ tap water), followed by a tie between Iceland Spring and the actual NYC tap water. Fourth place went to Poland Spring, and the expensive, French Evian came in dead last with half of the taste testers saying that it tasted bad.

My point in all of these examples is simply this; we all make decisions based on how we perceive reality. We go to specific restaurants over others because we perceive one to be better than the other. We buy organic fruit because we perceive it to be better than non-organic fruit. We buy bottled water because we perceive it to be healthier and better tasting than regular tap water.

The reality is that reality doesn’t really matter.

That is your ace in the hole as a website owner. The Internet gives you the ability to be whoever you want to be. I mean, who would have thought that two guys in a condo basement would end up directly competing against multi-million dollar brick and mortar stores that had been established for years, but we did, and the great thing about the Internet is that you can too.

The key is to make your website look credible, professional, and trustworthy. The best way to do that is by benchmarking.

Benchmarking is one of the few concepts I learned in university that I have actually been able to apply to the real business world. If you’ve never heard of the term before, here’s the stuffy BusinessDictionary.com definition: (yawn)...

“Benchmarking is a measurement of the quality of an organization's policies, products, programs, strategies, etc., and their comparison with standard measurements, or similar measurements of its peers.

The objectives of benchmarking are (1) to determine what and where improvements are called for, (2) to analyze how other organizations achieve their high performance levels, and (3) to use this information to improve performance.”

And now here’s our version of benchmarking:

“Benchmarking is the process of researching your competitors and making a list of all of the things they do better or different than you, and then brainstorming ways that you can improve upon what they’re doing in order to give your business a competitive edge, while providing your customers with the best overall product or service in the market.”

Every time we create a new product or service in our company, we go through this process, not only in terms of the actual product or service but in site design as well. We gather ideas from several of the top companies from the market we are entering. By combining several of the benchmarks we’ve collected along with our own unique ideas, we end up with a product or service that is vastly different and far better than anything else on the market.

Benchmarking can improve many areas of your business. Hopefully you are considering several ways to put this concept into practice. For the purposes of this chapter, however, let’s focus on benchmarking your website design.

One of the main benefits of benchmarking the most successful website designs in your market is that these companies are already successful, which means they’re most likely doing more things right than they are doing wrong. By looking at how these competing websites display information to their customers, it will help spark ideas on ways that you can customize and even improve upon your existing website design that you might not have considered.

One thing I want to stress is that benchmarking is not copying. Do not copy what your competitors are doing. The whole purpose of benchmarking is to find out what’s already working and then internalize it, improve it, and make it your own.

In today’s market you have to be authentic. If you’re not, people will see right through your website, your marketing and even your product. Being real and true to who you are as a person and as a company is key when using benchmarking as a tool.

Bottom line; if you’re going to sell to a market where there are already well-established, multi-million dollar companies, then you need to look like a multi-million dollar company, and you do that by benchmarking. That way, when potential customers visit both your website and your multi-million dollar competitor’s websites, they won’t know the difference. In other words, in their reality, they will perceive both you and your competitors as equals.

Remember - Perception is Reality.

A word of Caution: Always tell the truth.

As tempting as it may be to slightly enhance the benefits, features, or test results of your product or service, or add a fake testimonial or two in order to make things sound more appealing, don’t do it. Online shoppers are always on the defensive, and anything that looks slightly off or too good to be true can quickly throw up red flags.

Your reputation online is essential to your success, so you need to be careful to always keep yourself and your business practices above reproach. If not, it is very easy for an untrusting or disillusioned customer to make a damaging post about your website to a third party complaint site or social network that can permanently harm your reputation.

Another reason why it’s so important for your site to look as credible and trustworthy as possible is because the search engines are continuously improving, and are moving more and more toward visual results, like images and video, instead of text.

Let’s take Google for example. Starting in 2011, whenever you do a search, they display an instant preview next to each result. If you happen to click on any of the instant preview links, an instant snapshot of that website’s homepage will pop up on the screen, like the one on the following page.

Whether you realize it or not, this little feature is a game changer. Suddenly people don’t have to wade through 10 different titles and page descriptions before deciding which site to visit. Suddenly they don’t have to click on all 10 search results to see what each site has to offer. Now they don’t even have to go to the website to see which websites appear to be the most credible, professional, and trustworthy. They can view your website and all of your competitor’s sites side-by-side in seconds, right from the Google search engine.

Now more than ever, having a good, solid website design is vital to your online success.

Fortunately, everything you need to make your website look absolutely amazing is relatively inexpensive and right at your fingertips, thanks to online freelancing.

Online freelancing is a wonderful resource that puts thousands of professionals at your beck and call 24/7. Anything you can imagine or need, you can find a freelancer to do it for you at a very reasonable rate. Just go to one of several freelancing sites online, post your job description, push send, and within a few minutes, freelancers from all over the world will start bidding on your job.

Once you’ve got several bids, you can go through their resumes, portfolios or chat with them directly. Haggle and look at what their previous customers had to say. Because website owners have thousands of freelance workers to choose from, the cost for getting quality work done is very inexpensive. Once you have decided on a particular freelancer, you award him the bid and he will start working on your project.

Here are a few things we’ve learned over the years that will help you have the best freelance experience possible.

1. Make sure they speak English fluently. We tend to hire more people from countries where English is their primary language, even if we have to pay more. There just seems to be a huge disconnect otherwise and it can take a lot longer to get things done.

2. Make sure they agree to unlimited revisions. You want to make sure that they will keep making changes to their work until you are completely satisfied.

3. Don’t pay them all of the money upfront. Hold at least half of it until the job is done and you are satisfied with the results.

4. Don’t choose the cheapest bid for your job unless their resume, portfolio and English are amazing. Often times, these people are freelancers who got bad ratings from a previous job and so they created a new profile. There are obviously exceptions, so just make sure you do your homework.

5. Give them as much direction as you can in your job post. We often refer to specific websites that we like and tell them to “make me a menu like this style,” or “create two columns like this website.” Basically, the more information you can give them upfront, the smoother the project will go.

One final word of advice. While it’s tempting to try and do everything yourself - especially when you’re starting out, one of the best things you can do is to let other people that are experts in their fields do the things that they do best.

Don’t try to learn php.

Don’t try to learn html.

Don’t try to learn graphic design.

Don’t try to learn professional photography.

All of these things can be outsourced online by freelance experts for very reasonable prices. However, the one thing I advise you is

DO become experienced at hiring and managing freelancers.

If you can successfully hire and manage freelancers, then you can do anything you could ever dream of online. Once you know how to effectively leverage online freelancers, you can say to your friends “I’ve got people for that” and actually mean it.

Some of our favorite freelance sites are Elance.com, Scriptlance.com and Guru.com.

You don’t have to use a freelancer for everything. If you are ready to hire part-time or full-time employees then you can leverage their time and expertise to help you instead of or in addition to freelancers.

For example, we currently have two graphic designers, two programmers and two customer service representatives that all work directly in our office. Although we still use freelancers on a regular basis, this core group of staff gives us certain freedoms and flexibilities that we currently need in our business.

If you're just starting out, it's a good idea to rely more heavily on freelancing. Then, once you're established and growing, odds are that you'll find a mix between freelancing and in-house staff that work well for you.

In closing, we hope you always remember that perception is reality. The way your website looks will make or break your business online. There are literally billions of web pages out there on the World Wide Web. Your content and your design must stand out above the rest for you to become the authority and the “Go To” place for consumers in your market.

Also keep in mind that change is a good thing. We are constantly updating and improving our websites - sometimes on a monthly basis. This doesn’t mean that you have to change this often. But it does mean that you need to constantly be looking for ways to improve the perception you are portraying.

On that note, may your ice cream be delicious and unique, and may your ice cream truck always look like a million bucks!