When evaluating your product or service, your website visitor is influenced by the opinions of people in authority and what they say about you, your business, and your products and services. If you can leverage this authority, you will help your site visitors make a decision and increase the chances that they will take action.
There is a natural human tendency for us to depend on authority figures to help us make decisions. We don’t have all the information at our fingertips, and sometimes the information is too complex to understand anyway. So we turn to authorities for guidance, for example doctors for medical advice, political commentators for voting advice, and film critics for entertainment advice. These external authorities have a lot of influence on our decision making, especially when we do not have enough skill or knowledge to make the decision ourselves.
You can use the same principle on your website, especially when promoting a complex product or service that the website visitor cannot evaluate for themselves. Here are three ways to use the power of authority in this way.
1. Direct endorsements
If well-respected authority figures have endorsed you, your business, or your product, take advantage of this by promoting it clearly and prominently on your site. This is the most powerful form of authority endorsement, because the authority has specifically endorsed it. Endorsement could be in the form of a testimonial, product review, or even a passing favorable mention.
The “authority” could be a specific person (for example, “Neil Armstrong says …”), but it could also be a group or other organization (for example, “Forbes magazine says …”). Of course, they need to be recognized and respected by your site visitor.
2. Indirect endorsements
If you don’t have testimonials or reviews for your product itself, look for reviews or testimonials that support the general category of products. For example, if you sell a brand of low-fat sweeteners, it’s helpful to quote health experts who recommend low-fat sweeteners in general, even if they don’t specifically recommend your product.
This is not as powerful as direct endorsement, because you have yet to convince your website visitor that you the product is your best choice. However, it still gives authority to its general category of products.
3. Published research
For some products and services, it is helpful to cite published research that supports the claims you make. Sometimes this can take the form of scientific research, for example by making claims about medicine, health, and fitness. But it doesn’t always have to be so formal, as long as it is deemed credible, for example, surveys conducted by a reputable market research company.
If you cite this type of research, be careful not to overwhelm your site visitor with too much information. Usually it is enough to cite the source of the research and the results, and assume that the site visitor can do a Google search for more information if they really need it.