Do You And Your Website Have Credibility?

by: Dean Phillips

I recently received an unsolicited e-mail from some company offering me their search engine optimization services for $199. Even though I had absolutely no interest in the offer, just out of curiosity, I decided to check out this company with the various search engines.

Incredibly, they were nowhere to be found! I couldn't find them on Google, Yahoo, Dogpile, anywhere! That's because they didn't really exist. They never did. They were just another one of the many prevalent e-mail scams out there.

The point is, even though I had zero interest in their offer, had I been interested, this company's credibility was totally shot, for two reasons: First of all, for spamming me and secondly for obviously being a scam at best.

Another time, I was surfing the Internet, checking out different business opportunities to review for one of my clients, when I came across this company selling "turnkey" website packages for $1295 and up. As I was reading the information about the various packages they had to offer, I came across their various addresses and telephone numbers.

Again, after doing some checking, I discovered those addresses didn't even exist. In addition, the company was based in Israel and the only type of payment they would accept were wire transfers.

Anyway, there were more than enough red flags and alarm bells for me to get the picture pretty quickly. This company was an obvious scam and I advised my client of that fact.

What about you and your website? Do you have credibility?

If you offer website design services, is the design of your own website up to par?

Do you own your own domain name, or does yours contain the names, "Geocities", "Angelfire" or "Tripod"?

Can you back up your claims with cold, hard, indisputable and verifiable facts?

Do you have your name, telephone number and street address on your website?

Do you use authentic customer testimonials, complete with first and last names?

Do you offer a fair and reasonable money-back guarantee?

If you choose not to have a merchant account, do you use a reputable payment processor like ClickBank, that will actually stand behind and honor your guarantee?

If you can't answer yes to every single one of the above questions, you have a serious credibility problem! And it's costing you a lot more money than you realize.

When potential customers arrive at your website for the first time, they're both apprehensive and skeptical--and rightfully so. With so many scam artists and rip-offs prevalent on the Internet, you have to expect and anticipate that type of mindset.

That's why it's critical you put your prospects minds at ease the moment they land on your website. And the best way to do that is to instill confidence by utilizing the steps that I mentioned earlier.

If you follow those steps, I guarantee you and your website will both have credibility and you'll have the profits to prove it!