Some Simple Ways to Build Trust

Websites that lack trust are often plagued by low sales, and low conversion rates. If visitors don’t immediately trust a website they will leave, and not come back. New sites have a harder time gaining trust because they don’t yet have a reputation or any reason for a visitor to think they are trustworthy.

Here are 3 ways to make your website more trustworthy:

1. Create a clean, professional website from the start, or redesign today.

The most important way to get visitors to trust your website is to make it as professional, and clean as possible. Sites designed without usability in mind or those that look unprofessional will be exactly that in the eyes of the user.

Look at the websites you trust the most. How many of them look unprofessional? I’m guessing that the answer is none.

Pictures should all be clear and crisp, sized correctly, and should fit in with the page they are on. Cartoons should be gif’s and images should normally be jpeg’s or png’s.

Avoid overly annoying colors or fonts, and design your text and background colors to compliment each other.

Use clear, easy to read fonts, and text that isn’t too large or too small.

2. Leave out the ads on your business or ecommerce website.

If you have an ecommerce website selling products, then placing ads with your products shouldn’t even be a thought. The same thing goes for lead generating or services websites where your visitors fill out a contact or application form.

The ads I’m referring to: text links, banners, Adsense, Yahoo contextual ads, other in-line content ads, or anything that looks like an ad.

Ads work great for informational websites when used properly, but they don’t belong on your business site.

A quick way to loose a customer: Let them see that text link for ‘FREE MORTGAGE LOANS’ or ‘CHEAP MEDICATIONS’ on your website footer right below the submit button.

3. Use services that provide a seal like Verisign SSL, or the BBB.

These services aren’t free or even cheap in many cases but they do help to create trust.

Verisign SSL certificates are ridiculously expensive. You can easily find a SSL certificate for $100 or less, making Verisign at least three times more expensive. What you do get with Verisign is that little Verisign logo, that people see and associate with trust. The verisign SSL approval process is much more in-depth than other SSL’s I have used, and any business that goes through it is most likely a trust-able organization. While most consumers probably don’t even know what SSL is, Verisign is a very common logo that is associated with some of the biggest names on the web, Tiger Direct, Paypal, eBay, CompUsa, Best Buy, etc…

The BBB on the other hand helps to build trust because it is a positive consumer protecting organization. By becoming a member of the BBB, a company is saying that they want to provide a quality product. BBB reports contain negative information about a company and the way they handle upset customers. In my experience the BBB is more effective for service selling websites rather than tangible products, but it does help in either case.

The reason that I choose the BBB and Verisign above other companies is that they are the most recognized companies by consumers, they are reasonable priced compared to other Seal programs, and other services can give mixed signals to customers. Truste, and Scan Alert are well respected companies that provide similar SEAL services, but to the average consumer these services can come with a mixed signal. Consumers often interpret security scanning service logos, especially in the case of Scan Alert, that the website has been hacked or data has been compromised in the past. This is absolutely not what a website wants their customers to think.