How the founder of a value added software reseller realized his business needed trust

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Founded in 2008, Fourlane is a B2B company that resells, implements, and advises on QuickBooks, the extremely popular accounting software. They do the same for Acumatica, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software that's used by medium-sized businesses.

Because they're a value added reseller, they're not just selling the software, but ensuring that customers get maximum return on their investment, explains Rob Adams, COO and co-founder.

"If you own QuickBooks Enterprise or Acumatica," he says, "We'll step in and do CFO-level monthly services, or technical project work focused on the financial systems to make sure they're getting the most out of what they've paid for."

These tools allow companies to grow by better managing their finances, customer-relationship management, reporting, HR, and more.

A product that requires trust

In a crowded marketplace, Fourlane needed to convince customers to pull the trigger on expensive products that can cost more than $10,000 per year. But it wasn't just price, says Rob, that might make customers think twice.

As advisors, "Fourlane’s clients count on us to provide an in depth understanding, analysis, process workflow, and integration of their QuickBooks accounting software or Acumatica ERP software with their entire business," he explains. "Fourlane regularly performs a deep dive into our clients’ core financials and the inner workings of their accounting and ERP systems. Because of this, our clients need to have a very high level of trust and confidence in us and our ability to handle sensitive data."

Although Fourlane's website is safe, Rob realized he needed to communicate this to customers in order to win their business. Because McAfee is the most recognized name in building trust online, he opted for the McAfee SECURE service.

If at first you don't succeed...

Hoping to improve direct online sales, where a large part of their business is conducted, Fourlane implemented the McAfee SECURE service by placing the engagement trustmark in the site's footer and the Shopper Identity Protection trustmark in the checkout.

Rob and his team made note of Fourlane's conversion rate, and checked back after two months, and hundreds of thousands of visits.

The results … didn't exist. Rob couldn't see any difference in online sales, or in any other metric. Puzzled, he removed the service, added it again, and again saw no difference.

...try, try again

He removed the service, assuming it made no impact. But then Rob anecdotally noticed a dip in sales. Puzzled as to why getting rid of a service he thought wasn't working would hurt sales, he investigated.

After running the numbers, Rob found that his analytics software wasn't set up properly! Once that issue was sorted out, he implemented the service again, and this time, they definitely noticed something.

A service that "more than pays for itself"

When the results came in, the McAfee SECURE service increased the ecommerce conversion rate by 60%!

Needless to say, Rob was impressed: "I was skeptical if we would see any significant increase, but was pleasantly surprised when we compared the before and after data points. The increase more than pays for the McAfee service."

Helping everyone grow

Just as QuickBooks and Acumatica help businesses grow, the McAfee SECURE service helps Fourlane. "The McAfee SECURE service has allowed us to get more leads and online sales with less budget spent on paid advertising," says Rob.

Now Fourlane can spend their energy and resources on what they do best: adding value to QuickBooks and Acumatica customers.