Is Your Website Trustworthy? If Not, Check These 7 Tips

July 17, 2019July 20, 2019 Pallavi Godse website appearance, website design, website trustworthiness

Your website appearance plays a key role from a visitor’s point of view.

Do you think it doesn’t?

Then rethink again.

As per some research, it takes a person less than a second to have an opinion about your website. If they find your site good, they’ll surely browse it. If not, off they’ll go.

However, the site examination doesn’t stop here.

If visitors stay on your website, they will keep on judging the complete appearance while their visit. On the other hand, if they feel your website is unattractive, around 38% of them will stop browsing. This means you lose a lot of traffic.

You will find several articles on the internet address about making your website appearance more beautiful, but very few discuss about making your website more trustworthy. Most of the people use professionally-created themes to build their website and so most of the sites look pretty good already.

Therefore, I am going to tell you about making your website trustworthy so that people find it a safe online destination to browse.

Until your visitors feel safe on your site and trust what you have to say, it will be difficult for you to turn them into customers. When a website is trustworthy, it helps you make more sales, and customers also feel safer about sharing personal information, such as their email address, credit card number, and home address.

A research says that 54% of customers return to make a purchase from a marketplace they are familiar with. This indicates that making your site trustworthy is the key to get people buy from you consistently.

Increase Your Website’s Trustworthiness with These Tips

You can display your website’s trustworthiness is several ways. But not all of them are related to design improvement.

Get A Reputable Domain for Your Website

What will be the very first thing that your visitors will see when they visit your website? It is your domain name, right? So, make your domain name such that visitors will remember it easily.

Check these useful tips on how to do that:

Ensure your main keyword is included in your domain: For instance, if you sell toys, a domain like ‘www.christoys.com’ would be the best. With this, it makes clear to a new visitor that your website is all about toys. Plus, it includes your business name.
Select a high-quality domain extension: You will find many crazy extensions to choose but it’s good to stick to simple extensions such as .com, .store, and .io.
Check if your domain name isn’t used prior: Prior to using a domain name, check that it isn’t already trademarked. In case it is, you might get sued and your website will be forced to shut down. Though you escape from all this, customers will check if you have used a copied name, and that will make you appear less trustworthy.

So, consider these things, when you select your domain. Additionally, keep your domain name short and symbol-free.

Install An SSL Certificate

You already know that installing an SSL certificate on your website is very important. If you don’t know, check these three reasons:

With an SSL a secure connection is created between your hosting server and your visitor’s web browser. So, if any data is exchanged between them it remains completely safe.
It helps to increase the trustworthiness of your website. If your website has the SSL certificate installed on it, internet browsers show a green padlock next to your web address, and that lets them know that your site is secure.
Your website conversion rates increase. If your website doesn’t have an SSL certificate installed, your visitors’ browsers will display your website as “not secure.” Though there isn’t any security risk with that, but it appears to be negative. It will affect the number of sales you get on your website, along with your Google ranking.

Place Your Ads Properly

Ads greatly help in monetizing your site. Therefore, you find it tempting to go overboard with them.
But avoid doing it.

No doubt you will gain some ad revenue but if too many ads are placed on your site, it can drive customers away. This means you could lose more money.

This problem commonly occurs with site owners who use pop-up ads. These ads can slow down browsers, and really annoy your visitors, so much, that they leave your site.

To avoid this situation, use ads on your website in a conservative way. This is because it shows you respect your visitors. Check the below tips for displaying ads:

Keep it less to get more: If you place more ads on your website, you will have less space for the content which your visitors actually landed on your website. So, place only two or three ads and avoid scaring your visitors away.

With this, your ads will help to get the required focus as compared to your content. Your visitors will be happy and will stay on your website.

Don’t mix your ads: You might have seen websites where the ads look just like the site’s thumbnails or headlines. This confuses the visitors and it is created purposely, so that visitors don’t know if they’re clicking on a content link or an ad.

Would you like to be getting tricked? Of course not. So, if you do the same with your visitors, they won’t visit your website again. Ensure that your ads and content appear different and you can do this by using a different color or a wider placement.

Make a clear mark for your ads: Make sure ads on your site are labeled as ads. For example, if you have a video or blog post on your website, visitors should be able to identify it clearly as a promotional video or sponsored post.

These tips will help you to create a website that helps you to earn money from ads without hurting your visitors’ personal digital space.

Design Your Website Professionally

As per Adobe, maximum people prefer a site that’s beautifully designed instead of a simply designed one.

It means a beautiful design matters more, and it’s something that all want to have for their website.

In the end, the first impression made by your business comes from your website’s design. Use of bad color combos, illegible text, and excessive ads create a negative impact on a visitor’s impression of your site.

Check these things to focus on that may help make your website’s design more beautiful:

Unique images and illustrations: Stock photos create mistrust faster. So, always use high-quality, original photos and illustrations on your website.
Prominent CTAs: One main CTA (call to action) should be present on every website page for the user to perform a specific action on your site. For instance, if you want a visitor to browse your products or sign up for a free trial, a clear CTA should be placed on your website. This will make it easy for your visitor to take the required action.
Attractive layout: Your website shouldn’t appear to be a wall of text. Rather, it should offer a multimedia experience and include pictures, videos, and images. These elements enrich your website and make it more pleasant to use.

Gain Credibility via Social Proof

People are doubtful about new websites and also hesitate to use them. If you display that your site is approved by other users, they will feel safe to use it.

Social proof comes into spotlight at this point. It helps to increase the confidence about your products and services as they get a clear view of other people using them. Ultimately, they have a positive reaction.

How can you provide social proof to your visitors?

Check the below three main ways:

Feature your products or services on credible sites: You can contact the editors of popular media outlets or hire a talented writer. Or else you may get your company mentioned in a noteworthy source.
This will provide you an excellent marketing opportunity and also you’ll be able to proudly boast on your website that your business is featured on a big brand.
Post customer reviews and success stories: This is another effective step in which you will need to post real customer reviews or success stories on your website. This information will continue to convince new visitors that your website is trustworthy for years and years.
Post testimonials: Understand that testimonials are different than user reviews. Your best customers write the testimonials for you at your request. With this you will have a proof that an existing customer loves your products or services. You can display it on your website.

Customers can easily spot false testimonials and might damage the trustworthiness of your site. So every single statement made by your customers must be genuine and true.

Don’t worry if you can’t get your product or service mentioned on a popular website. Adding customer reviews and a testimonial or two will also be worthy. When you successfully execute any of these marketing strategies, it will make your website appear more trustworthy, and that’s what you want.

Publish Honest Content

Why do visitors land on your website? It’s because they want to check for some information. First-time visitors come to your site for that purpose only. Purchasing or signing up comes second.

If those visitors like the information published on your website, they might take an action. Hence, the content on your website should be of the highest quality.

By keeping this in mind, you can improve the content on your website:

Hire a professional copywriter: Your website is place to showcase your products and services. In order to explain all the details to your audience in a clear, engaging way, you may hire a copywriter.

This will help to communicate your marketing messages better than you. Also, the result will be highly authoritative and trustworthy content.

Double-check your content for errors: In case you have created a blog section on your website and regularly post content, make sure to keep it as accurate as possible. Avoid publishing wrong information as it will only promote mistrust in your users.
Keep your word: In case you claim or promise something about your products or services or your company, in general, ensure you keep your word when a visitor does business with you. If you fail to represent your product or honor a guarantee, for example, will push away customers and blemish your brand reputation.

Keep Your Policies Transparent

Lastly, make sure your policies are clear to your visitors. This will help them to know what they can expect from you while doing business through your website.

Below are the points to state your company’s policies to your visitors:

Display your privacy policy: When you publish your privacy policy on the website, you can mention the kind of data you collect and the way you use that data. It is important to share this information, for gaining the trust of your visitors.
Showcase your terms and conditions: With the terms and conditions page, visitors get an idea about your company’s niche and what it isn’t responsible for when doing business online.
Publish an FAQ page: The FAQ page helps to clear the common queries people have about your business and its products or services.

Mentioning your policies and offering answers to common questions will help to gain more trust and honesty of your website and also, help the visitors to know that you run the business in a transparent fashion.

Last But Not the Least

Your website trustworthiness is known to you but to convince it to your customers and prospects, you need to make it appear trustworthy. Even, if you implement just two or three tips in this article it’s going to help you a lot.

The aim of this article is to make your website appear more trustworthy to visitors, you can take a step further and make its inner components more trustworthy as well.

Make your website GDPR compliant: The GDPR comprises of asset of privacy laws that are compulsory for any website dealing with the data of EU citizens. It needs sites to enable users’ to access their own data, delete it, get a copy of it, and more. When your website becomes GDPR compliant, it increases its trustworthiness.
Improve your customer service: Ensure your website has a Contact Us page that lists the ways in which a visitor can contact you. Significantly, if a visitor contacts you via your website, respond to him quickly and ensure he gets satisfied with your work. This helps to increase your visitors’ trust on your website.
Display your social media profiles links: Displaying your social media links on your website enhances your online presence, and helps exhibit the impression that your business is will always stay.

At last, remember to optimize your website for speed and ensure it works on all mobile devices and popular browsers. A high-performing website demonstrates professionalism and this leads to increase in site’s trustworthiness.

For maintaining a long and healthy relationship, customers and prospects should start trusting your business. Let us know what you have done or do to make your website appear reliable.