Opening a website it takes someone only a few seconds to determine whether they want to leave or stay – which can be the difference between a sale you’ve been waiting for or the loss of a customer. A big part of the decision is made on whether or not the visitor finds your website to be trustworthy.
With the possibility of phishing scams, malware or even just poor customer service, people are much more wary with their clicks than ever before. Especially if you are running an online store where a transaction is taking place, you need to be hyper aware of how your business and website are perceived.
If you are using a hosted solution, you do not have to worry about the security of your checkout but how are you actually getting a customer to that point and making them trust your website so that they continue to the point of purchasing?
A recent study was measuring what consumers thought made a brand trustworthy:
A company is moral. Trust involves the belief that a company is law-abiding and fair while also showing that it cares about its customers.
A product will do what it claims to do. A consumer has expectations that the company’s product will live up to its claims, which are assumed to be accurate and unbiased. Most people trust that when they hit the “send” button, an email will be sent to the selected contact.
Information will be correct, complete, and unbiased. When people trust the information and choices presented, they are less likely to feel a need to go elsewhere.
A product or service has quality. People want to feel confident in their choices and we all want to feel confident that our digital devices are quality products that will safely hold important data.
“A company will protect me.” Security and privacy are increasingly a key concern for consumers as they navigate the digital world. People want to know that a company has their best interests in mind – safely store my personal credit card information and keep sensitive information private.
Here some direct action on how to make your website more trustworthy:
1. Having a Strong Design Makes a Huge Difference
When you walk down the street looking for a place to grab something to eat, are you going in to the restaurant with a cracked window, marquee signs with flickering lights, and with a strange odor coming out from under the door? Or, do you go into the restaurant that has a beautiful type for their logo, bright lights, and open windows that welcome people passing by?
Probably the latter. So you should be applying the same principals to your online storefront, your website. There is no excuse for having a poorly designed website in this day and age. There are so many resources available to create a setup that is beautiful and functional and that makes people want to learn more about your product, and eventually buy.
Some quick tips how to design for trust:
Avoid all caps paragraphs
Try to avoid comic-sans font (unless it’s a part of your overall strategy)
Ensure your website doesn’t have any poor grammar
Don’t use tacky stock images
Keep the layout of your website simple
If you have the capital available, it’s definitely worth hiring someone with a good understanding of design to help with redesigning your storefront.
2. Add a Hint of Personality to Your Website
Isn’t it nice when you visit either a retail store, or an online store, and feel as though you’re in good hands? You might not have even spoken to anyone yet — but you know from a purely visual aspect that everything will be okay. You just know that the people behind the business really care about their brand, and even the products they carry.
Whether that be conveyed through the messaging on their website, storefront, or even something you read online—it’s clear that they’ve built a sense of trust with their customers. But how do they do it?
Pictures of the people in the company
Quotes from reputable brands
Star ratings from reputable sites and people
A clear call to action
A good mission statement
Humanized product pages, real people using or interacting with your product.
3. Make Sure Your Website Is Up-To-Date
Beyond just having consistent uptime, fast load speeds, as well as a custom domain—there’s a few other things you can do to ensure the overall health of your website.
Be sure that all of the information on your website in regards to shipping, contact information, product information and more is all up to date. Take some time to go through product descriptions, as well as old blog posts to ensure that there isn’t any outdated information that may be misleading to a potential customer. A good way is to have some sort of press page, or press mentions displayed directly on your storefront. Keep these as up to date as possible as they act as a form of social proof for your business —and as a result, also add trust.
4. Use Secure Badges to Display That Your Website Is Safe
Now more than ever, online shoppers are hyper aware of their privacy and security and it is important to be able to prominently display that a visitor on your website is browsing securely.
If your ecommerce solution doesn’t automatically display a notice to customers upon checkout that they are using a secure server, let your customers know your website is secure by displaying your SSL certificate symbol or a notice informing them of the fact. There are a few ways to do this as well. It can your company number, trust badges in the footer of your store, or even a sidebar note that mentions that you’re secure through a third-party provider. Anything helps.
5. Show That You’re Active Online
Many visitors check a websites or stores social presence to see how active they are with their community. If they haven’t commented, shared, or liked anything online in the past whie, how can I be sure that they’re still an active store? What if they never call back, they are just taking orders and forget about shipping them out?
It’s important to show that you’re engaging with your audience. Whether that be by responding to tweets on Twitter, or sharing product shots on Instagram—it eases a buyer’s mind.
Alternatively, having an online blog for your store is a fantastic way to keep your visitors and customers up to date with what’s going on with your business.
Including a Twitter and Instagram feed and telling things about the company life adds even more personality to the business. It simply feels like a genuine company because they are so transparent with their activity in the community.
6. Make It Easy for Anyone to Contact You
There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to contact a business and not being able to. If you are a trustworthy business, then why make it difficult for your visitors and customers to contact you?
You can do wonders by setting up a simple contact form on your website. Even better is if you are an established business and have the ability to provide your visitors with an address they can reach you at and to include a phone number for visitors to reach you at. Customers expect that they should be able to reach you whenever they please—whether its through live chat, social media or phone—being responsive is absolutely critical in building trust in your business and website.
Make it easy for customers to actually speak to someone from your company, and their trust will grow.
Now that you know how you can create trust on your website, you can start implementing these tips right away!!!