11 quick tips for a trustworthy website

Do you know what will be the final deciding factor in any transaction on a website? Trust. If the visitor doesn’t trust your brand or site, he won’t buy nor convert—even if you have what he/she was looking for. Thankfully, there are a number of actions to ensure you have a credible, trustworthy website. Before we jump in the list of said actions, let’s take a look at the 4 types of credibility, as spelled out by BJ Fogg, Ph.D, psychology professor at Standford:

• Earned: what your visitors experienced themselves
• Presumed: what they heard about you, assumptions
• Reputed: what someone told them about you (or referenced)
• Surface: their first impression, outlook

This gives you a pretty good overview of what you need to consider and where your battles will be. All right, here we go!

1. Back up your claims

Try to provide third-party evidence for each of your claims (studies, review, …).

2. Hunt down your bugs, typos or other pesky annoyances

Don’t shoot yourself in the foot. Make sure everything works and that your site is bug/typo free.

3. Keep it updated

If your last article was written 2 years ago, or your website was created in 2005 and has not been updated since, how do you think your visitors react…

4. Show your faces

It’s easier to trust a brand (or anyone) when you can put faces with brand, so get your team on there!

5. Make it easy to use

If they have to work, and think hard to use your website / solution, it’ll be that much harder for them to trust you enough and buy from you.

6. Stay away from obvious stock pictures

Most fake pictures look… fake (who would’ve thought), don’t rush your choices of pictures and stay away from obvious fakes “politically / ethnically correct group of young pretty people laughing and looking at a computer”.

7. Make it pretty but appropriate to your purpose

Most people will judge you based on what they see as soon as they land on your website. What do you want them to think, how do you want to come across, what values do you want to show?

8. Don’t be obnoxious with your ads and promotional content

If people on arriving on you website risk a seizure with all the ads and other obnoxious blinking things, let me tell you it doesn’t transmit trust. Don’t do things YOU would hate to be submitted to.

9. Be easily reachable

Make your contact information prominent on you website, and provide as much as possible. It reassures your visitors and push further away the fear your business might be a fake one.

10. Have a consistent voice across all channels

Is your voice and message (we’re saying message not content, you obviously shouldn’t publish the same way on all the different platforms) consistent across all channels? If you say something different every time, people will wonder which one is real, think you don’t communicate internally at best, or that you don’t look trustworthy at worst.

11. Be reassuring

Gotta take them by the hand and give as much reassurance as possible. This means testimonials, social proof, experts recommendations, case studies, safety/security marks, jobs page, customer reviews, client list … Back to you now, go over your website with these eleven points in mind and ask yourself: Is my website trustworthy? Would I buy from my company?