If you want your business to be profitable, you must establish trust between you and your potential customers. Providing information about yourself and your business will help you establish credibility which translates to trust.

Post Contact Information
You must have your contact information listed on your web site. Your business address, phone number and email address are the most important elements of your contact information. If people can not contact you they will most likely feel uncomfortable and leave your web site.

Provide Company History
How long have you been doing business? If you are selling informational products, what makes you an expert? It doesn't hurt to add some background information about you and your employees (if you have them). This gives the customer the feeling that you are not hiding anything from them because you are, in essence, showing your visitors that you are a real person.

Present a Professional Image
Every customer contact, either through your web site, email, mail correspondence or by telephone must be completely professional. If your website looks as if it were haphazardly thrown up on the net, odds are you won't make many sales.

Display Testimonials
This doesn't mean make up a bunch of nice things about your business or product, slap on some fake name and viola! Instant testimonial. WRONG!! This will only end up doing major damage to your business. Use REAL testimonials written by REAL people.

Give a discount on your product to a few select individuals in exchange for a written testimonial you can use on your site. Ask permission of course before posting their comments and link it to their web site or email address. This will be one of the best references you can provide.

Always Give a Guarantee
When you provide your customers with a guarantee, you will be building trust. Certainly a business that would post "No Guarantees" or "Products As-Is" is going to make the customer feel uneasy and cost you a potential sale. By offering some type of guarantee, you are showing that you stand behind your product. It also gives your customer that warm, fuzzy feeling that they're safe shopping with you.

There are too many scams on the internet and many people have been burned. People are becoming more careful about who they hand over their hard earned cash to and are even more cautious about giving out their credit card information. By making your visitors feel they can trust your company, you will find that more of your visitors turn into buyers.

Kim Haas

You may already know me from my biggest online venture, Womans-Net.com. I started Womans-Net in June of 2000. The site quickly blossomed into a leading resource for women in business and work at home moms.

My latest and fastest growing venture is Article-Host.com, where I have continued my work as an online publisher and writer. Article-Host allows me the opportunity to offer syndicated article services worldwide.

I earned an Associates Degree in Word Processing while raising a family. I am a self-taught webmaster. I began my online experience when the Internet was still a series of BBS's (Bulletin Board Systems) where users logged into each other's desktop computers - and monitors were still green letters on a black screen.

Although I had only limited formal education in business management and computer skills, I obtained my business education from the 'real-world school' where lessons weren't graded with A's and B's, but rather with success or failure. After failing at several MLM and 'work at home opportunities', I began seeing a pattern to the failures. Those failures were a direct result of not putting God first in my life and not having confidence in myself.

I currently live in south-central Illinois with my soulmate and our two children. We also share 4 adult children and 5 wonderful grandchildren.

Over the past ten years I've learned a lot about building businesses from the ground up, both online and offline, and I've learned how to deal with different types of customers. I have discovered that a little self-confidence can go a long way and I've found the mysterious "secrets to success".