Demonstrate Expertise

Highkey.com‘s claim to fame is their healthy chocolate chip cookie:

Let’s start by exploring why a demonstration of expertise is needed.

I Googled “healthy chocolate chip cookies,” and this is what I saw (watch the video below—it’s just 46 seconds):

There are countless competitors out there. Users on your site know they have dozens of other options.

If they don’t see a compelling reason to stick around, they will leave. To create a more sticky experience, demonstrate expertise.

And if they leave, there is only a 70% chance of them returning (source).

if I were Highkey.com, I’d prove to the buyer that we’re experts in healthy cookies by:

– Talking about the hard science of getting the ingredients to work just right.
– The science of metabolism.
– How we taste-tested everything that was available at our local grocery store, drove to locations that were a 2-hour away, and bought from a bunch of online specialty stores.
– Talk about how much time we spent in the kitchen taste-testing 100s of batches.

Why Marketers Don’t Rely On Demonstrating Expertise As Much

Here’s what marketers say: Make the buyer the hero of the story. Don’t make yourself the hero.

This is very good advice, but there is a little asterisk (*) here. Before you can make the buyer the hero of the story you need to prove you are worthy of their undivided attention. You need to demonstrate expertise.

In the video below I discuss this idea:

Next Steps

Demonstration of expertise is just one of the 3 things you need to focus on to maximize conversion rates. The other two are:

1: Price justification
2: Demonstration of expertise (covered in this article)
3: Us versus them