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Will putting your personal photo on the registration increase trust?

I've seen this on Customer IO and I think that it is a good idea however I've also asked around and people think that it might not be the best idea.

What are the pros and cons of this idea?

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I certainly think that putting your face against your product is good trust signal - it shows you're not afraid to be publicly associated with your product - that you're willing to stake your reputation on it. In the IO example, the CEO is not only showing his face, he's making a point of being available to his customers via email - another strong trust signal.

The folks at 37signals found that adding an image of a smiling customer significantly increased their landing page conversion. Though when they tested images of various different people it made relatively little difference to conversion.

The obvious answer is that this is a pretty straightforward thing to test. A basic A:B test where half your visitors get a form with your photo and half get a form without ought to provide empirical evidence within a hundred visitors or so.

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  • Can you explain what you mean by various different people?
    – Fredrik
    Aug 3, 2013 at 16:40
  • @Fredrik he means it should have a person but, which person is not important.
    – Herr
    Aug 3, 2013 at 17:48
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Personal photo is just an element, which increases trust. But it is deffinitely not enough to put a photo on a page to increase registrations.

The elements of trust on CustomerIO are:

  • professional looking design and simple interaction
  • contact phone number
  • photo in non-official style of a (presumable) real person behind the site (no ties, no status barrier)
  • handwrite-styled message (more human)
  • message from CEO (authority), not from some hired person from support
  • contact personal email (I trust you, I give you sensitive information, so trust me as reciprocity)
  • readiness to help (care of customer)

All this elements in complex create trust for the site. Not just personal photo!

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I'd have to agree with A/B testing this one. It depends what your audience wants to see or what they expect out of your company.

For instance, at Autosend.io we tested a personal photo in the signatures of our blog posts with a personal email and we tested it in our feature box where users subscribe to our blog. Although human photos have high conversions on average, we found it depends what the users are doing if it actually does. It also depends on what picture you're using, the gender, etc. As you can see, this is why A/B testing is required.

We're also considering running a test like this for our personal welcome emails and some of the emails we've automated to go out when customers need help in our app.

Maybe on your registration page it doesn't even have to be your face. Try some of your top customers based on what kind of customer you're trying to attract. So, if you're trying to attract a small, solo-preneur...use an image of one, with their title, testimonial, and a very short description of their company.

Again, I think timing, your customer base, and your brand play a lot into the conversion rate of a personal photo.

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Most retail stores do it, it seems to show some trust in the real world so that you can find the manager if you really need them and you see them on the sales floor. But I don't see how it could help trust in the digital world - it could be a random person and not truly you, or it could be you and you're just a con-artist trying to earn more trust.

Either way, I don't see why people would trust you any more just because a picture of someone who you claim is you is on your website.

When I say "you", it's about anyone in general who puts pictures on the site. Not calling you a con-artist, it's just an example.

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