Trust is a hard thing to come by these days, especially online. With greater access to information now more than ever, customers are increasingly skeptical of the businesses they look at online. As a business owner, you now have to work twice as hard to inform people several things all at once: 1) you exist, 2) you’re available, 3) you’re trustworthy.
By applying these aspects to your business’s website and putting effort into making it more trustworthy and your brand more transparent, you can stand out against your competition and even gain some new loyalty from your customers. Here are some tips on how to make your business’s website more trustworthy and more likely to be used online.
- Lay off the advertising!
Not only is this tip referring to spammy, pushy pop-ups coming from third parties, but also your own promotions. As much as we know you need to make sales, there’s a limit to how much advertising we’re able to take in and that limit is getting smaller day by day. Even Google has come forward saying they hate pop-up ads.
It’s a tough balance to walk, but it goes without saying: unless your advertisements are 1) designed beautifully, 2) are placed in a non-invasive manner, and 3) follow up on what they’re promising to visitors, such as signing up for an ebook for example, people are going to click away no matter what. Next time someone proposes a pop-up ad on your website, dismiss the idea entirely. The less clutter you contribute to the Internet, the more likely people will come to trust your website and company both.
- Promote your testimonials
Any feedback you can provide from people who endorse and support your company and its products or services is worth sharing online. Whether you choose to use written testimonials from your customers, logos from the companies who have received your services and support you, or favourable articles and quotes from the media, you can use all of this to your advantage by promoting it on your website as well as in your marketing efforts.
If you can, try to use the real names and photos of the customers who support you. Videos are also a newer means of promoting glowing reviews. Whatever format you decide to use for your website, know that it’s all helping convince your customers that you’re both a legitimate company as well as trustworthy.
- Make your company available
Customers need to know that if they need anything, you’re available and reachable. If it seems like you’re hiding from them, that’ll hardly make you seem more trusting! You can improve this by doing a few simple things:
- Provide contact information throughout your website. Not only on a contact page, but also in the footer and everywhere else where it seems applicable without distracting the customer.
- Insert your contact information on authorized directories, such as Google My Business and your most active social media accounts for example. Other ideas include Angie’s List, Yelp, and Better Business Bureau.
- Include your company’s contact information in any form of advertising or promotion you create.
- Speed up your site’s loading time
This task is a little more difficult because in order to make it happen, you need to know why your website isn’t loading very well in the first place. Normally giant, oversized imagery is the cause, however there are several other factors that may come into play that are less obvious. For more ideas about causes of a slow business website, you can refer to our article “5 Things that are Slowing Down Your Website“.
At the end of the day, if you’ve managed to shrink down the imagery and you’re still having loading problems, the root cause could be connected to older software which means you need to make some drastic changes…maybe even a new website.
- Use an SSL certificate and other security features
An SSL certificate is what provides your website with the HTTPS and provides visitors with the sight of a green padlock where the URL can be entered into your browser. Not only does this tighten your business site’s security, but also it encourages trustworthiness and comfort amongst people who are hesitant about shopping online through your website otherwise.
SSL certificates are also part of why some websites rank higher than others, especially on Google’s front page. This is not half-baked information either—Google has confirmed that these certificates are a positive ranking signal.
Other security aspects require, again, a professional agency’s touch and expertise. For more information on how to best protect your website from would-be cybercrime and malicious attacks, you can refer to our blog post “6 Easy Ways to Protect Your Business’s Website from Cybercrime“.
Start with a Website Built by V3 Media
Let’s face it, no one is going to trust your website if it doesn’t look good or feel good to use compared to your competitors’ sites. If that’s the case with yours currently, then these tips are not going to help you until you get a new website. And yes, this is the only way to go about it, and ask yourself this before you move ahead: do you want to pay top dollar for a website that’s trustworthy and usable and beautiful to look at, or top dollar for a “new” site that still relies on older software and possesses insecure features and ugly aspects you needed to clean out in the first place…and will remain in your site even if you slap a fresh of coat on it (so to speak)?
To us, the choice is a no-brainer: start making your website way more trustworthy with some help from V3 Media. We’ve been building websites for over 30 years and are still going strong; that’s how you know you can trust us to help you become more trustworthy. Give us a call and get started today.