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"I heard traffic rumbling on the road outside my front door. The line of cars and buses was sitting in the sun, hardly moving. The frustrated drivers were trying to get to work but couldn't because the roadworks further down the road were clogging everything up.

I chuckled to myself as I opened the door to my office and turned the computer on. As it boots up I think about the cars outside with their frustrated occupants. I much prefer my 'rush hour' to theirs!" -- Neil Shearing.

Your Visitors Are Scared. They don't know if you're a hacker sitting in the corner of dirty basement, looking to steal their credit card info, or a legitimate company. Gain their confidence and you'll make sales. Image is everything - look professional online.

Here's a ten-point checklist to find out how much confidence your visitors have in you:

1. Do you have your own domain name?

If not, you may as well give up trying to make a sale online!

Way back in 1997, I made a few sales from free webspace donated by my Internet Service Provider, so it can be done... but as soon as I could afford it, I bought my own domain name (www.scamfreezone.com). At a cost of a few dollars a month, it's business suicide not to.

2. Do you have professional hosting?

This is quite closely tied to your domain name. I've seen people have a domain name which then forwards you to their free webspace. What's the point of that?? If anything, it looks worse than simply hosting on free webspace. At least then you're being honest. If you buy a domain name, and then forward visitors to free webspace, they'll think you're trying to pretend you're a professional business when you're not. I don't imagine that gains much visitor confidence.

Also, professional webhosts are there to host your domain. They're not (usually) an Internet Service Provider, a grocery store, or a bank. Therefore, they charge you for one service, hosting. As you're footing the bill, you can expect good service, and your site to be "live" for at least 99% of the time (I prefer to see 99.99%). A domain name with professional hosting is your foundation to visitor confidence.

3. Do you list contact details on your site?

If you list your phone number ("freephone" numbers are very cheap to get hold of, and look very professional. Ask your telecoms company...mine charges me about $7 per month for an 800 number, and that includes $7 of phone calls into my freephone number each month), your mailing address and your email address, the visitor can check up on you. Usually, just listing your details is enough to instil confidence, but, if the visitor wants to check out that you own the domain name, or that your email address works before they purchase, they can.

4. Do you accept credit cards?

Now this really is a "no brainer". You can either get a merchant account secured on your business, or set up a free account with a third party processor. But either way, if you want to sell anything online, you must be accepting credit cards. In addition, the more cards you accept, the higher your visitor's confidence will be. Here in the UK, I added American Express and Diner to my acceptance of Visa and Mastercard. I tried to accept the Discover card, but they don't approve non-US merchants. Their loss. :-)

5. Do you accept other payment forms?

Each one will boost confidence in you because, presumably, you had to go through an approval system to be able to accept the different payments. I accept PayPal. Not only does this catch more sales, but PayPal ranks each merchant within their system. Each time you get paid from, or send money to another verified PayPal member, PayPal adds one to your score. My score is now 443 which indicates I'm a PayPal member of long standing.

6. Does your website look like a dog's dinner?

Visitor confidence also comes from how your website looks. If it looks professional, loads quickly, and grabs their attention, you're halfway to a sale. On the other hand, if it has hundreds of affiliate banners, broken graphics and badly written text, you're not going to get very far.

Is this a "no brainer"? Yes, looking back. But I remember my first websites very well, and I know how many times I reinvented them before I was happy with a professional look. My personal advice would be to have lots of white space, reasonably large, black text and very few images. Of the few images you do use, make sure they're crushed to the minimum size so that your page loads quickly.

7. Is your personality in your pages?

People don't want to do business with a webpage; they want to do business with a person. Stick your picture on the site. Write with personality. Use "isn't" and "wasn't" instead of "is not" and "was not". Tell a story if necessary. Think about when you visit a hardware store or a grocery store. How many times do you buy something without speaking to someone at the store? Never? You probably ask where is "such and such"... you probably speak to the checkout assistant. It's the personal touch that inspires confidence and sells. I've even had people tell me they've bought from my site purely because of the family graphic I have on the page!

8. Are you fast?

People want speed and efficiency online. If you have bucket loads of it, you'll gain the confidence of your visitors. Make sure your page loads quickly, you reply to email quickly, and, if someone orders, you get the product into their hands in minutes with a personalized "thank you" email (obviously, digital goods only can be delivered in minutes, but the same principle applies to anything sold online).

9. Can you boast of your success?

Nothing inspires confidence like success. If you can indicate to your visitors how well you're doing, and how you can help them, you'll make sales. Personally, I sometimes like to mention that my website is in the top 15,000 sites for traffic and I'm successfully selling four digital products online. I also mention my Ph.D. in breast cancer research because that indicates success in a totally unrelated field. As soon as you can think of something to indicate your success, get it on your web pages.

10. Got confidence?

Confidence, like laughter, is infectious. If you're confident about your business and your products, you'll convey that confidence to your visitors. My "best digital guarantee ever" applies to all of my products and indicates my confidence in them. Make sure you have top-quality products, write about how they'll help your visitors, and they won't be able to resist buying them :-)

11. Endorsements!

What do you mean, this is a ten-point list?? You know I like to overdeliver :-)

Testimonials are probably one of the biggest confidence boosters you can get. Visitors read them, and just can't stop. I've seen some salespages consisting of dozens of testimonials. There's nothing better than a third-party endorsement of your product or service, so don't be shy to ask your customers after several weeks of owning your product, or using your service, what they think of it. Hopefully the feedback will be good, so don't forget to ask for permission to put it on your site!

Neil Shearing, Internet marketer since 1997, has a content-rich site with loads of valuable information for ANYONE marketing online. For more information, click here to visit Neil's private site.

Disclaimer: Like anything else in today's fast moving Internet world, the information contained in this article is subject to change on a minute's notice. Such updates are posted here at Home Business Opportunities as they happen.