Strategies for building customer trust through website design

Increase web sales & enquiries by building trust in your brand.

Your business website is your online shop window that should work really hard to show-off your company’s quality, reliability and business ability. This means that gaining trust from your website visitors can mean the difference between turning visitors into customer enquiries and new sales, or losing them to one of your competitors who is doing a better job of earning your customers’ trust.

Here are some suggestions that will help your website to make the right impression and show potential clients that your company is the one to do business with.

First impressions count

1: Make sure that your website looks great

In the same way that we judge people within a few moments of meeting them, your website visitors will also make snap decisions on whether your company looks trustworthy and one that they want to work with within moments of your website loading. If your website design looks dated, has broken elements and looks a bit rubbish, people might think that your products or services are a bit rubbish too! When your website creates a great first impression visitors are much more likely to become your new customers and not become lost to your competitors.

2: Avoid gimmicky sales messages

The internet is highly competitive so whilst it may be tempting use flashy sales messages such as “The Best Ever Offer” or “Cheapest In the World”, the only effect you’ll have is to cheapen the look of your website and the value of your products or services. Many people are weary of the internet so clear and trustworthy sales messages work much better.

Information about your products or services

3: Be concise and write well

Provide well-written, but concise content and tell your potential customers everything that they might need to know about your company offering. We humans are said to have an attention span of about 8 seconds when scanning a website for the information that we are looking for, so make certain that important information is readily available on whatever website landing page visitors arrive on.

4: Help your website visitors to find what they are looking for

Think carefully about the way that you design your website’s menu and website navigation to ensure that pages are organised in a way that is logical to someone outside of your company. If your sector uses technical terminology, then consider altering your menu system so that it focuses on the solutions that you provide rather than products and services.

If your website holds details of lots of products or services consider adding a search function. However, remember to think about how many times you have used the search box on another website and the results have not shown what you were looking for – if you add a search box to your website make sure that it really works and won’t simply frustrate your potential customers. Test your website search functionality and if it doesn’t work the way it’s suppose to, fix it.

Establish your business credentials

5: Share case studies

Publishing case studies and success stories on your website is a a great way to help potential clients to understand more about the way that you work, your company ethos, as well as enabling them to relate to clients/customers with similar requirements to their own and so better understand how you might help them. Using case studies as an explanation of how you work with your current clients also makes use of the old wisdom of “if it’s good enough for them, it must be good enough for me”

6: Use customer reviews to endorse your business

Endorsements from other customers are a great way to build trust in others. Be prepared to ask your current customers to provide reviews about the great service that they have received and then get these statements added to your website.

7: Shout about your awards, accreditations and industry badges

If you have won an award make sure that you mention it on your news page and make sure you include any award logos on your home page. For industries and sectors that are regulated it is important to show that you are a member of the regulated body as well as any sector memberships.

Attention to detail counts

8: Team and staff photos

Adding photos of your staff can transform a faceless company into people and personalities that your customers can relate to. When choosing a company to buy from people are often looking for a personable service so by adding real photos of your staff you will reinforce this message.

9: Keep your website fresh

Dated website content can make people think that your company is also dated.  Consider adding a blog or news section to your website to tell your potential customers about your latest company news and sector developments.

10: Get your website seen

People trust brands and websites that perform well in search engine results pages.  Make sure that your website has some decent search engine optimisation done on it.  When your website is seen more then your brand trusted more.

11: Make communications quick and easy

Don’t hide away your contact information. Ensure that your telephone number and email address is clearly visible on your website. If you make use of a contact form make sure that it works and when you receive a message via your website ensure that you respond quickly.

12: Tell people where you are

Some types of businesses don’t also include their office address on there website.  This is sometimes simply because they don’t want to encourage people just turning-up to visit.  However when you include your business address on your website you provide another opportunity to show potential customers that you are a real business with a physical presence.

So…

Building trust online isn’t rocket science. By using good design and attention to detail you can easily increase trust, credibility and customer confidence to better promote your business online and convert more website visitors into paying customers.