21 Ways to Build Trust in Your Website

by | Jan 11, 2018 | Website Design

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Want to make sure your customers know they can trust you and what your business has to offer? Check out these 21 different ways that will help you to build trust in your website:

1. Your website design gives your first impression online. Make sure it is professional, mobile-friendly and has a design relevant to your industry.

2. The navigation menu must be intuitive. If visitors can’t find what they are looking for easily, they will question your competence in providing what they want. Do you have your phone number at the top of the page or easy to find and is it clickable?

3. Make the website personal by giving it its own tone and voice. People buy people.

4. Review all your links. Doubts will quickly form in your visitors’ minds if links don’t work or, worse still, take them to error pages.

5. Good grammar and spelling matter. Errors give the impression of sloppiness and carelessness. Have your set reviewed by another person to help catch mistakes.

6. Publish REAL testimonials. Try to always use real names and link to websites where possible. If you have to publish a photo of a written letter or another review.

7. Publish case studies about customers you have helped, who use your products or services and can relate to future customers.

8. Write articles for humans, not search engines. Make your content helpful.

9. Make your ‘About Us’ page personal and comprehensive. It plays an important part in making visitors feel comfortable that real people are behind the site.

10. Clearly identify who is behind the site. Publish your photo or the photos of the key people involved with the site. Nothing creates more suspicion than a site that tries to hide the identity of its publishers.

11. On the ‘Contact Us’ page, provide an email form, telephone number, fax and address of the company. In Europe, it is a legal requirement for sites taking funds, but even sites driven by advertising will benefit from openness.

12. Provide email addresses linked to the website domain, not addresses from free webmail services such as Hotmail and Gmail.

13. Clearly publish your guarantee. I would recommend making it a 100% money-back guarantee if possible. Clearly state your refund and returns policy.

14. Provide a telephone number where people can call and talk to a person.

15. If you use PayPal, put the PayPal logo on your site. If you accept Visa, MasterCard, Apple Pay, etc. then put the logos on your site.

16. Use Google search on your site for two reasons. First, it is a great search solution which will help your visitors find what they are looking for. Second, having the Google name on your site instills trust.

17. If there are well-known industry associations for your subject, join up and put their logos on your site.

18. On every page state, “We take your privacy and security very seriously.” Link the statement to the security and privacy policy.

19. If you are selling a subscription, offer a low-cost, entry-level option. This could be a one-day taster, ‘a week before billing starts’ or a monthly trial.

20. Only ask for information from customers that you really need. For example, for an email newsletter sign-up, the only information you REALLY need is an email address, so that is all you should ask for.

21. Allow people to “unsubscribe” from your mailing list. This may sound very obvious, but I have found that many websites still don’t follow it.

21 ways to build trust in your website