5. The Halo Effect
How many times have you found a new product or service and bought it just because someone else who you trusted had bought it or promoted it already? Mainstream advertisers rely heavily on testimonials from celebrities and athletes to sell everything from corn chips to deodorant. Sometimes those relationships are paid for directly and other times they happen more naturally.
Brock Lesnar was a WWE Wrestler for a long while. Then he becomes a UFC fighter and quickly becomes the world champion. The WWE got a tremendous benefit from that happening via the halo effect. Their brand becomes more closely associated with real combat sports and the implication is that while wrestling in the WWE is fake... the athletes performing in the WWE are excellent and many could do very well if they chose to enter the UFC. Whether that is true in fact or not, nobody would know unless many of them try it... but the effect on the confidence of WWE consumers who buy WWE payperview shows rises whether many professional wrestlers cross over to MMA or not.
Similarly, if Brad Pitt goes on Letterman and talks all about the great time he had for a week in Antigua and how beautiful the place is this time of year. That creates a halo effect for Antigua tourism whether they arranged for him to say it or not, because if Brad Pitt says Antigua is great this time of year... many believe he would know.
What sites and brands your site is associated with has a tremendous impact on the amount of trust your visitors have in your products and services. If your site advertises another site which scams people.... and it is seen by someone who has been scammed by that other site before - it isn't just that the consumer won't trust the site that scammed them, it's that they wont trust your site anymore either for recommending a known scam site. Conversely, if your site is recommending sites that the person has joined before and had a good time with - they not only will appreciate the site they enjoyed but also will trust your site more since they know your recommendations are good ones.
In the adult industry this can be equated to something like DVD download sites providing content with the brand names of quality DVD studios that their potential customers have heard of before and enjoyed. It can mean showing symbols of responsibility recognized by many adult fans like the RTA tag or
www.ASACP.com logo, because from the consumer point of view a site that seeks to protect children is also probably less likely to steal their identity. A halo effect can also be achieved by showing review snippets from trusted review sites on a warning or review tour page.
Likewise, when a consumer sees a WebsiteSecure.org seal on the join pages of Vivid.com, Twistys, Playgirl, VirtuaGirl, Hustler, BlazingBucks, SWANK, NaughtyAmerica and many other reputable brands - and then sees the same mark again on your new site that they are visiting for the first time, you benefit from a strong halo effect, as do all of the other sites displaying it when your satisfied customers later find their sites as well.
Summary:
For some the short term 'churn and burn' approach will always be too alluring to overcome. However, anyone who has been reading
www.XBIZ.com, paying attention to changes in card association enforcement, seeing new banking policies go into effect, watching affiliate program closings, and noticing actions by government regulators freezing the assets of companies - is already aware that many of those methods are becoming increasingly risky and decreasingly profitable. The internet is not a new entity anymore. The people using it, regulating it and making a living from it are more savvy than they were ten years ago. Meanwhile the people actually willing to pay for digital content (which is very different from 'most traffic') are found in increasingly fragmented places and require much more work or investment to attract to your sites than they did in years past.
Getting the maximum number of ethical sales out of every 100 uniques you generate is more essential now than ever before. Increasing the number of sales you get from your existing traffic is usually less expensive and easier than accumulating the corresponding amount of additional traffic that would be needed to accomplish the same sales goal. Many of the solutions are as simple as making sure your tour says 'They're the cutest girls' as opposed to 'Their the cutest girls' or working more closely with quality companies and less with people looking to bleed the credibility of your site for the selfish benefit of their own enterprise.
Gaining consumer trust requires constant vigilance and attention to detail. The task is not always easy, especially for an adult paysite owner. If a consumer does not trust your website they will not buy anything from it... and once a consumer loses trust in your site it is very unlikely you will ever change their mind in the future.
Lastly, it is very important to point out that you can never have 'too much' consumer confidence. If you are doing some of the things mentioned but are not doing others, consider them. If you are doing all of them, are you doing them all as well as possible? If you are doing other things to raise consumer confidence which are not mentioned, please post them in your replies, I'm always looking for new or improved method that I can learn from and I'm sure many others reading this are always looking for some as well.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Relentless (Stewart) is the owner of websites in mainstream and the adult industry which include popular review sites like
www.TheTongue.net, text / PR sites including
www.EngineFood.com, webmaster productivity sites like
www.WebmasterScore.com, SEO service sites, an exclusive paysite network and the
www.WebsiteSecure.org certification seal brand.