Everyone’s doing it. Sounds familiar, right, it should, it’s common human behavior. People typically do what other people are doing. Psychologists call this conformity; people will change their behavior to “fit in” or “go along”. Marketers use this behavior through social proof.

The goal is to increase conversions by giving evidence that you are accepted by others. Visitors, subscribers, buyers and influencers all trust you, then why shouldn't I. This kind of “informational social influence” is an easy and powerful way to establish the initial trust and credibility of your website.

We have to do this quickly. When a visitor first comes across your website, studies show that your site has about six seconds to make a positive impression on them or they’ll leave.

Visitors typically spend about 200 milliseconds (yes, that’s milliseconds) looking at the layout, color and density of your site deciding if they want to stay or if they’ll leave to check out someone else’s site. From there, visitors will spend less than three seconds "inspecting" your website. This includes looking at the content, grammar, assets and anything else on your site that they might find interesting. Another three seconds is spent interacting with the website, clicking on your links to see if there’s anything useful on your site. At the end of this six second process, visitors will form an opinion about whether they find your site trustworthy or not.

This is a very small window of time to persuade your visitors that your site is one they can trust.

“Would you like a new mobile phone, it’s just 20 bucks?”

What if you were walking down the street one day and a twenty-something guy comes up to you and says, “hello, would you be interested in a new mobile phone? I’ll sell it to you for just $20”. He pulls it out of his pocket and it looks legitimate. What do you do?

My guess is that you won’t buy it, even though the price is remarkable and you know it’s a good product. Why wouldn’t you buy it? Because of lack of trust. Why so cheap? Is it stolen? Does it work? What if it breaks the next day? You’ll have all these questions in your head and since you don’t know the guy, you’ll probably pass.

The same goes for your website.

Your goal is to talk about your offer in a way that makes people feel they’re getting a mobile phone worth of value for just $20, not by deception, but through communicating the value of your product. If you’re trustworthy, you have yourself a customer.

Credibility leads to money. Four in five users say that being able to trust the information on a your website is very important to them. You don’t buy from someone you don’t trust, do you?

• trust what it says,
• feel comfortable sharing their personal data,
• confident it’s worth spending their money here.

This is where “social proof” comes in. As we go through the Wealthy Affiliate training and create new websites, how can we gain the trust of our visitors? This is where the Wealthy Affiliate community can help.

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