Building trust

Do your customers see you more like a doctor or more like a lawyer?

When you speak to your customers do they trust you? Or, do they wonder what angle you are working and how much is it going to cost them?

Do you wear a white jacket and a stethoscope? Or a fancy suit?

Does your relationship start with a friendly hello and end with a lollypop? Or, does it begin with an non-disclosure agreement and end with a bill detailing 15 minute increments?

Do your customers confide in you? Or do they make jokes about you being on the bottom of the sea?

Trust (permission) is systematically established through consistently positive interactions. It takes a long time to build and only a short time to destroy.

What are you doing to build trust? What makes people distrust you?

What is the purpose of your website?

Many organizations already have a website, so they probably haven’t stepped back in a while and asked the very basic question: What is the purpose of a website?

First (as I stand on my soapbox) the purpose of a website is not about driving traffic. Counting hits or page views isn’t very informative. Sure it might give you a sense of volume, but a good website should be about driving the right traffic and engaging your visitors.

A good website is about achieving value for you and your customers. You can measure your success by assessing whether or not your visitors have been successful in finding the information (or completing the task) they need to move to a deeper level of engagement. Simply put, your website should help strengthen the relationships with your visitors.