With so many community web sites out there, how do you make your membership site stand out as professional and reliable.

I am sure there are many ways but one that I have found that will help give your members confidence in signing up (and paying for a membership) is to have an 800 or toll-free phone number for your customer support or web site support.

In the pre-online community era - toll-free phone numbers we expensive and most people still think they are out of reach for small business (including your community site) - that is simply not true.

With the growth of IP phones and online phone numbers, getting an 800 number is affordable even on the most limited of budgets -

We recommend you check out this affordable solution for adding a toll-free number to your members to get in touch with you.

Another very important sign of reliablity is to have your site certified by a well-known signing authority. The best in the industry and the most widely recognized for secure web sites is VeriSign.com - To give your members confidence to sign up, pay for membership and become and active member at your site: I encourage you to click the image below and read more about their service.

Then sign up and add the VeriSign authority badge to your site - in a VERY visible area - for instance the footer of every page and particularily on any signup, payment or order page.