Putting a web video on page one of your website is not about information, it is not about product presentation, it is about trust establishment. As this article will explain, giving visitors to your website a chance to see you the owner – face-to-face in a web video – will immediately begin to establish trust in you and facilitate their decision to want to do business with you.
It may be a surprise to realize that people can have trust in someone who is unethical or even criminal. Having trust is more about believing in another person. However, the degree to which one person trusts another is a reflection of belief in the other person’s honesty, fairness, and benevolence. Important for establishing initial trust in business is that fact that a failure in trust is more easily forgiven if it is due to a failure in competence rather than a lack of benevolence or honesty. As a result, sometimes a business providing inferior services may fare better with their customers than a company providing superior services – at least temporarily – if people feel the first company is honest and means well.
The phenomenon of trust is summed up in the following definition. It is described as a “heuristic decision rule, allowing the human to deal with complexities that would require unrealistic effort in rational reasoning.” Lets break this definition down. Heuristic processes are trial and error approaches to problem solving which begin with the most accessible solution and go on to another solution, only if the first solution doesn’t solve the problem. In terms of business, if a customer finds himself interacting with a business owner that he intrinsically wishes to trust because the owner appears benevolent, good-natured, and well meaning – then the customer will prefer to trust the owner and do business rather than get involved into complex rational thought about what might go wrong in the business relationship.
So, what does this have to do with putting a video on page ONE of your website have to do with trust?. When a surfer goes onto your website and thinks about doing business with you – someone he’s never met – he can rapidly be won over by a short online video of you talking with him. If he is engaged by your story and connects with your personality then he will immediately wish to trust you and do business you – because that will be the easiest solution for him to take.
And this leaves us with one more important take-away lesson. A front page video needn’t trouble itself with a description of company features and benefits. It simply needs to provide a relevant reason for the user to trust the owner / business. A short 1 to 2 minute story, passionately told by the owner saying that he established the family potato chip business 30 years ago because he wanted to provide people with a crispy chip that wouldn’t lose its favor in the package is a fine example that will win trust right away.