GFY Educational Series: Consumer Confidence - Maximizing Revenue In A Soft Market
 

Consumer Confidence: Maximizing Revenue In A Soft Market

For many webmasters in the adult industry the current market climate is new territory. The wild west days of throwing up a banner somewhere and waiting for your payout checks to start flowing in are quickly coming to an end. More importantly, the internet is no longer 'new' to customers, regulators or your competitors. Many buyers have been previously burned by unethical merchants and free content sites are shrinking the size of the pool of paying customers, while a combination of regulators and banks are making the market untenable for some previously profitable business practices. So, if you aren't going to just close down your sites and walk away... what can you do maximize revenue in a soft market?

Conversions Are King

In the past there were lively debates about whether content is king or traffic is king. In the current climate the reality is that conversions are king. 200 uniques that result in 3 sales are worth 3x as much 200,000 uniques that result in 1 sale. Buying massive amounts of traffic that doesn't buy anything or having great content that can't generate enough momentum at the point of sale to complete a transaction may look nice on a stats report about traffic or look good on your monitor in your office... but it doesn't make your bank statements look any better.

There are a number of products and services available to assist site owners seeking to get access to traffic or tracking, and many methods to acquire more content. However, the simplest and least expensive way to immediately improve your profitability is to work on your conversion ratios directly by generating a higher degree of consumer confidence in your site itself.

Fear & Uncertainty Kills Sales

No matter how good your content or products look, how cheap they are, or how desirable they are to a potential customer - If the consumer does not trust your site but wants what is inside... they will simply look to find the same or similar content somewhere else instead. Good sites that fail to earn the trust of a visitor are essentially just advertising a niche for their competitors. A customer who does not trust your website will not buy anything from it. Period.

"Between January and December 2009, the Consumer Sentinel Network received more than 1.3 million consumer complaints. Identity theft was the number one complaint category in the CSN for calendar year 2009 with 21% of the overall complaints." http://www.ftc.gov/sentinel/reports/...nel-cy2009.pdf

A june 2008 Zogby Interactive Survey ?found that ninety‐one percent (91%) of adult users on the Internet are concerned that their identities may be stolen including 50% who are very concerned." http://epic.org/privacy/idtheft/epic...nberg_6-09.pdf

There are dozens of other studies by reputable organizations and government agencies available online detailing the fact that many potential customers choose not to buy a product based on a lack of trust in the retailer or website. There are also studies showing that impulse buys happen far more often when the potential customer trusts the merchant or vendor which means more sales from customers who normally would not have bought anything just because they were comfortable and in a buying mood thanks to the way the merchant marketed their products or services. Put simply, you need to always be sure your customers are as comfortable as possible when you are asking them to give you their money or their personal information.


Ways To Simply, Inexpensively And Effectively Increase Consumer Confidence

1. Be Error Free:
Having any kind of imperfections on your websites can be a cause for consumer alarm. It is important to note that even a tiny error can do serious damage to consumer confidence because the size of the error is often not related to the amount of alarm it causes. All adult site owners try to make sure their pictures, links and videos work correctly but the smart owners go a step further.

Text:
Hiring a professional copy writing company or carefully proofing your own site text is a very simple way to increase consumer confidence. It may not seem like a big deal to you to have a few typos and misspellings on your tour text, but imagine if you walked into a fancy restaurant and the waiter handed you a meal menu that had several items misspelled. Would you feel safe and secure eating their food? Would you be more likely to eat somewhere else instead? What if the competing restaurant was only a click away and eating there didn't even mean you had to move to a new table? Site owners spend thousands of dollars on design and content... while a few hundred dollars spent on site text can have a very positive effect on every visitor your site entertains. If you lack the expertise or in-house staff to address the text of your site sufficiently, take a look at www.AdultCopywriters.com or www.EngineFood.com

Compatibility:
Make sure your site is compatible with as many browsers and user settings as possible. Not every surfer has the same setup that you have. Only 65% of Americans have a broadband connection at home, while 30% of Americans have used a mobile internet connection according to a 2010 FCC Report. It's an interesting report filled with statistical data that may give you a better idea of who is visiting your site and what they are using to see your products. http://www.fcc.gov/DiversityFAC/0324...y-horrigan.pdf

Is your site available to your users in the format that they would be most comfortable viewing it? For example, not every mobile user is on an iPhone... and 'being error free' is something that only works on an individual basis. If your site works perfectly 99.9% of the time but does not work perfectly the one time a particular person is viewing it... you just lost any chance at converting a sale from that potential customer. There are plenty of online tools and services like http://browsershots.org/ that can be helpful for testing.

Design:
It is true that design is subjective in many ways, but there are some objective measures of design as well. If your site looks like it was built in 2001 that does not mean it its going to convert like it is still 2001. Clean site pathing, clear interface controls and properly laid out design not only make your site look 'good', it also makes it look like the person operating it is reputable. If you walked into a shopping mall and saw the paint on the walls was peeling and the floors had not been mopped in months, you might leave and head to a different location before even considering buying anything from the merchants selling products inside. Top designers like www.dickmansdesign.com don't just make sites that look pretty, they make sites that establish credibility through designs that are backed by detailed market research as much as they are backed by creativity.

2. Do It Their Way

Payment Options:
For years you have been hearing that not every customer wants to pay by credit card. Some merchants have resisted offering alternative payment options. Speaking strictly from the perspective of consumer confidence, having powerfully branded payment services from a variety of processors available can increase the level of trust that a potential customer has in your site overall. If you walked up to a store that had a big cardboard sign on the door written in magic marker saying 'CASH ONLY' your point of view about the store would be affected. If your potential customer sees that your join page offers payment by Credit Card, Check, SMS, Phone and other methods... the implication is that your site has been approved by many billing entities and that they have each done some due diligence research into your website already. Anonymous payment options like www.TrustCash.com and www.netcash.com also give consumers the perception that their identity information is entirely safe because not even the merchant has access to it during a transaction.

Translation:
Many of your potential customers speak English as a secondary language. That means the text on your site should either be written in a way that is easy for someone to understand without a formal English education, or translated into a variety of languages to suit your traffic, or both. Obviously you won't have 100 languages available, but if you look at your traffic stats and notice you are getting a fair amount of visibility in a country that speaks Spanish... providing a Spanish version of the tour is a simple way to make each of those potential customers feel more confident that the owner of the site they are viewing has their interests in mind. www.translationsxxx.com handles more than 30 languages and they are well versed in all of the industry specific language necessary to create a coherent sales pitch in a variety of languages.

3. Certifications:
For decades consumers have relied on trusted sources of information to do their research and testing for them. Newspaper reviews of new movies, Zagats reviews of restaurants and Consumer Reports ratings of products have earned the trust of the mass consumer market and are able to boost consumer confidence for merchants, products and services in their listings. The same is true, and even more powerful, online because on the internet people are routinely buying products from merchants they have never heard of before, or merchants that are not local to their area.

Trust Seals:
Certification seals are also something you have surely seen offline for decades. Government stamps of approval on food products, hotel chain certification awards, and even things like the Oscars or Grammy awards are essentially designed to generate consumer confidence in a product or service based on an inspection of it by experts in advance.

For websites there are seals designed to demonstrate that a site is free of viruses and malware, properly encrypted and safe from third party hackers. Versign, McAfeeSecure and others offer those kinds of services. They come with monitoring and scanning as well as a simple seal that shows the site is safe from third party scammers.

WebsiteSecure.org approaches the consumer in a different way. Checking to see if the site itself and the people managing it are doing so ethically from the consumer point of view. Doing test joins and cancels, reading the terms and privacy pages, checking join forms and taking other steps to make sure that the consumer will in fact get what they are promised and be charged no more than they have been told to expect.

A decade of wild west days and the recent rash of aggressive billing tactics used by some have severely damaged the reputation of all online businesses. Now, rather than being trusted and given the benefit of the doubt by consumers, in many cases a potential customer requires that the merchant prove they are ethical at the point of sale before they will even consider signing up. Having a www.WebsiteSecure.org seal, or a VeriSign seal... or both on your paysite can go a long way toward doing that.

As the owner of WebsiteSecure.org I obviously think that there are many reasons it is the best certification for site owners based on its low cost, strong branding and unique visibility among adult consumers. For more information on that, contact me via ICQ# 266942896 and I will gladly walk you through a full demo.

Review Sites:
To be clear, not all review sites are the same. Some people throw up a glorified blog with little credibility and nearly zero attempt to provide honest unbiased reviews. Those are not review sites. On the other hand, the adult industry has some very well known high traffic real review sites that have been around for years developing loyal bookmarkers who rely on the trusted reviews they publish. Even an 'average' score from a review site like www.TheBestPorn.com, www.RabbitsReviews.com, www.TheTongue.net or www.AdultReviews.net can do a lot to improve the credibility of your site.

If a review reader sees that a real review site gave your site a score of 79 and took points off because your site does not offer a picture slide-show option - the subtle fact is that he knows the site has been reviewed by a credible source and while it doesn't have a slideshow... it can't be complete garbage or they would have said that it was in their review. Sites that are listed on a dozen major review sites and have consistent scores and factual data stated about them benefit from the fact that credible reviewers did not find any serious flaws in their product. www.WebmasterScore.com offers a free Review Site Submitter that allows paysite owners to send out a detailed review request to more than 50+ quality review sites in a matter of minutes. The list is prescreened and can save you many hours of your time. It's also entirely free thanks to generous sponsors.

Security Measures:
Internet consumers are increasingly well-informed and educated. The internet is not new anymore. The number of people who know what SSL encryption is would probably surprise many of you. Making sure that not only your billing page but your submit page (where you collect a user name or email address) is SSL encrypted is a smart and simple move.

Popups, popunders, chat bots and other common scripts used on adult sites should be very carefully designed and coded if you intend to use them. If a user comes to your site and starts seeing a bunch of ad windows opening or a gray popup that 'feels like' a windows PC error message - their trust in the site that spawned the consoles declines rapidly. If their virus protection gives them warnings (whether they are real or erroneous), or some 'person' they have never heard of starts 'contacting them' on a fake instant messenger, their trust in the site drops. If they click a link that seems to go to one site and suddenly get skimmed somewhere else, their confidence in your site drops.

Some webmasters do earn profits using one or more of the above items. You obviously need to decide which work for you and which do not. However, I mention them solely to point out that they have a direct impact on consumer confidence and the more of them you use... the greater that negative impact becomes. In many cases simply designing a better looking popup window or taking other measures to offset the downward impact on your site credibility can make a big difference.

4. Transparency
Back in the day, there were plenty of sites with a few pictures of pretty girls on the tour and not much else. These days, having a tour that is transparent can be very helpful when you are trying to convince a consumer that your site is worth joining.

At a minimum, showing your visitors how many scenes are available inside and displaying other site details makes sense. However, some sites like www.VideosZ.com go much farther and do better as a result. Some of the best converting tours these days allow visitors to see the entire members area of the site they are considering (without the ability to download or watch the videos). Saying you have 116 scenes is not the same as showing the user a picture from each of those 116 scenes before they sign up. Showing user comments from the members area, an update schedule, explaining what content is coming up and when - each of these steps increases the confidence of your consumers by showing them that you do not feel you have any reason to hide. VideosZ.com shows potential customers 45,312 scenes on their tour, no wonder they are trusted by consumers so much more than a site with a single landing page and a signup form. www.Porn.com does an excellent job with transparency as well, and so do many of the www.kink.com paysites which is a major part of the reason their conversion ratios are much better as a result.

Note, I am not advocating giving away all of your content for free. I'm advocating showing your potential customers what kind of content you actually have instead of asking them to take your word for it that there is 'good stuff inside.' If you go to a shoe store and see a sign in the window saying 'largest collection of shoes in the area' you don't just assume that they have the shoes you want to buy... and even if you do, you don't hand anyone your money until after you have had a chance to see the collection or try a few on. The shoe store isn't going to give away all their shoes just because you come into the store, but they will gladly show you the boxes on the wall, have a display about a hot new running shoe being released a month from now, and let you try a few pair to help you decide. Even if you don't find a pair you like and you buy nothing, your trust in the store increases and the next time you are looking to buy some shoes... you come back to see what they currently have in stock.

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.

Great article Relentless. :)

well written article with some good insights there. I would also recommend certification type seals to help boost confidence in the product. At Payserve we use and have had good results from WebSite Secure

Excellent post Relentless! Thanks for all the great info it is very helpful

Great post. More trust seals would be great. I almost never see them.

he does great work:thumbsup:thumbsup

tips and tutorials are always a good reminder to make things better... well done Stewart

Yeah, quite frankly we could all use more. Smarter webmasters lead to better business all around.

Now submit your sites to Rabbits, all! :)

Congratulations in your article - and thanks for mentioning us.
Every player that wants to remain competitive and profitable in our segment should read it!

Sometimes it's good to take some time and think about how your site works in different levels (information architecture, design, text, codes, billing, traffic, content etc).
I'm sure you'll find something that can be improved - even if in the past you thought that it was perfect =)

Thats a lot of really good info... thanks for doing all that research as well

Solid explanations and great info! Thank you for this.

The fear and uncertainty combined with churn and burn are an old seo guys life story about where it all went bad.

Get's hard to get someone to eat food if they are pretty sure it's poison.

Thanks very much for the great article! Well written and very well laid out. Pretty much confirms what I was thinking. The trust seals are something I hadn't really thought of, though!

bump for a great write

thank i'm learning !!!

awesome article :) solid information never gets old

That's a very good point. Most webmasters spend so much of their time building new sites or adding new features that they forget to go back and visit their own sites to see things from the consumer POV. Every 'extra click' you require from a consumer, or tiny distraction that makes a potential customer uneasy about your website is a chance to lose revenue. :2 cents:

Very good post.

informative, insightful post... thanks

Great post Stewart. Building consumer confidence is something that should be done on a continuous basis in order grow your business. Very informative post. :thumbsup

That is a very good point.

good article :thumbsup

That's also an excellent point Gerard...

A site or business can not 'work on consumer confidence for a while' and then take a break and then come back to it again later. It has to be a continuous process that is considered in every aspect of your business and with each modification you make to any website or promotional materials. :2 cents:

Very good article and thx for mentioning Translationsxxx.com

Thank you!

So glad we're able to include this in the GFY Educational Series - thank you Stewart!

My pleasure Jill... I was flattered that you asked. :winkwink:

Very good read, thanks.

Nice article! Thanks for posting it here!

Well Done
 

Most never cared about the customer until now. Now everyone is praising an article that's at least 5 years too late.

'Late' is a relative term. Too late for a site that is known for scamming consumers... absolutely. Too late for companies that relied on churn-and-burn marketing... probably. Too late for someone who wants to start a newer online business... doubtfully. Too late for someone who has already established a brand that consumers have some degree of trust in... absolutely not.

Too often webmasters assume all sites and site owners are in the same boat. That is very far from the truth. Every site is its own entity, and while the industry does get painted with a broad brush by some - the people who continue to pay for adult entertainment (and yes there are plenty of them) do not look at all adult sites the same way or assume them to be owned by the same people. :2 cents:

After 10 years, most of the companies that are still around have usually been thinking about the customer via customer support, clear pricing and cancellation page. Someone is most likely to come back if they had a good experience. Just give what they pay for and make sure they have a good experience.

I always think its funny when anyone talks about traffic or content, wondering which one is key. You simply need both if you want to be on top and optimize your revenue.

Great post by Relentless though, all of the points he outlined are important and even the smallest thing is important in a business. My 2 cents would be that otpimization is key. Optimized CTRs, optimized layout, translated website, optimized billing, optimized user experience via adaptive members area etc. An internet business can be and should be global but a very few websites are, specially in adult.

is webmaster score still around?

Thank you.

www.WebmasterScore.com is very much alive and active. More than 250+ affiliate programs have been reviewed and have used the site to send out more than 2,000 paysite review requests to more than 50+ prescreened review sites. The site includes direct links to company news on XBIZ, a powerful search system that allows webmasters to compare up to five programs at a time in head to head mode on one screen and more.... If you would like help using the site contact me on ICQ# 266942896 and I will gladly show you how it all works.

Also, the entire site is 100% free to use thanks to generous companies including: Hustler Cash, PIMPROLL, VideosZ, TopBucks, Fame Dollars, JuggCash, Website Secure, HDPays, PuzCash, Wet And Puffy, Webair Hosting, CashDorado, Hunk Money, Engine Food, Reality Cash and Blazing Bucks.

Their decision to sponsor WebmasterScore and make powerful productivity tools free for all webmasters to use is also a great example of developing a positive halo effect and consumer confidence among affiliates looking to find quality programs worth promoting. :2 cents:

thanks for a great article / very interesting stats on adult consumer paranoia about identity theft.

Wow, amazing and really helpful. I knew some things, but most of them didn't. Thank you for such a nice tutorial ;)

excellent article. very well written and very informative. thank you very much and keep posting such nice articles.

Thanks for the great advice!

Excellent post, very helpful, thank you

very nice articles on that site, thanks for the care :D

Lucrative One .. Great for newbies like me ..

very interesting, thanks for that

Great read, thanks for share

Someone thanked me for this 3 years later at Phx forum. Great to see the advice earned them money :)

Great article. Thanks!

Intriguing concepts. Thank you so much.