Use A Badge To Increase Website Leads

We recently launched the ability for real estate agents to embed a trust badge into their websites and blogs that displays their reviews. I wanted to share some thoughts on how this can help you increase your business.

Verisign recently published the results of a study that asked people to rate the trustworthiness of unfamiliar websites on a scale of 1 to 100 (with 100 being “I trust this site completely”). The study found that the the average score was only 61 out of 100. In other words, most people on the Web give unfamiliar websites a rating just above an “F.” And how well do you think a website with an “F” would convert cold visitors into new leads? Not well.

It’s for this reason that many security & trust logos exist. You’ve probably seen these.

They’re designed to bring outside credibility to a website and reinforce the notion that a site can be trusted. However, trust badges have been mostly used by e-commerce sites to close more business. And they work very well — just read the studies that point to how adding a trust badge can improve website conversion rates as much as 50%.

Increase trust, get more leads
We think the same principle applies to real estate sites. While brokerage and agent sites don’t ask for credit card information, they do attempt to get home buyers or sellers to trust them enough to fill out a contact form. So every real estate agent or broker with a website should think about all the ways to convey trust to the consumer... “you can trust me, I’m a legitimate real estate professional,” “trust me, I’m not going to abuse or share your contact information,” “trust me, I’ll respond to your inquiry with professionalism and speed.” Some samples.

One of the best ways to increase the trust between you and an unknown person looking through your website is with a reviews badge. Check out the homepage of this client and notice the review badge just under his picture.

The best placement for trust badges are:

• In your navigation on every page (tacit reminder you’re credible & trustworthy)
• Prominently on your homepage so the badge is seen within 5 seconds
• On your contact forms (implies you’re a professional who will not abuse their info)

How about a widget?
The best placement for a reviews widget (as opposed to a badge) is on a separate page altogether since the widget will actually display the reviews you’ve received on your website. So you could title a page “Reviews” or “References” and embed the widget there like this client to give people a reason to contact you.

To be used in conjunction with our Survey tool, ReachFactor badges and widgets leverage your past client relationships to increase trust among people surfing your site so they are more likely to contact you. Your past performance is a strong indicator of future performance, so you should rely on it heavily to convey trust to people who have no prior relationship with you or your website.

Start by collecting reviews
ReachFactor clients – you can get to the badge and widget builder by logging in to your ReachFactor account and clicking on the Reviews tab. If you’ve collected Reviews from past customers, you’ll notice a link in the sidebar labeled Widget builder. Just click on that and play around with all the design types!

If you’ve not collected any reviews yet, start to survey your past clients right away. It’s also accessible from the Reviews tab, and really easy. Use these tips to get a great survey response rate.

If you need help embedding the badge or widget code on your website just contact us at [email protected].

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