Source Credibility and Conversion Rate Optimisation
At the risk of coming across like a bad Dr Phil parody, in this blog I'd like to go into a bit of depth about some of the psychological theories that influence how visitors interact with a website and how understanding these theories could help you improve your conversion rates. Some might be initially cynical about viewing internet marketing, specifically conversion rate optimisation, as an art, let alone a science. However, I feel that if a more academic or theoretical approach is taken to something as complex as CRO, then there is potentially a lot of value to be gained – both from a client and agency perspective.
Source Credibility
The most basic definition of source credibility is the believability of a communicator, as perceived by the recipient of the message. This might sound a bit erudite for our humble search marketing blog, so I'll translate it into terms more relevant to
internet marketing. As an online business, your source credibility would be determined by whether visitors to your website deem it to be authoritative and trustworthy. Of course, if they do then they are much more likely to complete a conversion with you rather than at a competitor that they consider to have less source
credibility. Naturally as humans in an offline environment, we are more likely to believe and act on the messages given to us by sources we believe to be credible, and this theory is not lost in translation when applied to the online domain. 
The important thing to remember is that there are certain things websites can do to improve their perceived source credibility. The first thing I'll discuss is the company logo;
something that might seem quite arbitrary, but in reality a professionally designed logo can have a profound effect on conversion rates. Some studies have determined that a website presenting a credible and professional logo can generate 2x to 4x more click-throughs than a website with an amateurish logo. An American
professor called William Haig created a framework for credible logo design that consisted of the following characteristics: • Credibility-based design • Symbolic of the company's core competency • Designed to communicate the company is trustworthy • Planned in content and design form • Symbol to
the left of the company name, • Prominent in application • Graphical symbol and name that work together Can you apply these traits to your logo, and if not, it's worth considering that it could be having a detrimental effect on your conversion rates. Do you think that Haig's principles can be found in the
Click Consult company logo above? So, other than the logo, what else can a website do to promote source credibility and improve the rate of conversions? The first thing is a professional sheen that instils confidence in the website visitor. This professional look can be created by having lots of engaging and quality ad-free
content presented above the fold of the webpage, fluent and easily accessible navigation and a layout that allows the user to quickly and intuitively absorb all the information that you, the webmaster, want them to. The key to this final point about helping the user intuitively absorb relevant information is partly dependant
on the quality of the content that is present on the webpage. Is the language customer-focused, technically accurate and augmented with certain trigger-words specifically included to make the users want to complete a conversion with you? These are all features of content on a website that has undergone conversion rate
optimisation. Perhaps the most significant feature of websites well optimised for conversions is that they solve the problem the visitor had that has bought them to the website in the first place. This might be a problem deciding on what speaker system to buy, which music news webzine to subscribe to or which restaurant to
have dinner at that night. As website owners, or CRO experts, you should always be thinking about what queries might bring a user to your site, what questions might they have and how efficiently does your website provide an answer to those questions. Thoroughly optimised websites are persuasive, accessible and well
structured; if it is all these things then visitors will deem it to have high source credibility and are likely to complete a conversion. Hopefully this blog has raised some interesting points about CRO and broader internet marketing subjects, but if you have any further questions then please feel free to leave a comment.
