At the center of every good relationship is one key component: trust. If you don’t have trust, how will you develop a loyal relationship and encourage conversions from your website?
Earning trust is vital to the success of your business. If consumers don’t trust your brand, they won’t buy your service or product.
Creating a Trustworthy Website
So, how can you ensure that your website gives off a trustworthy feel? There are many approaches, so let’s look at some of the most effective techniques to use…
Constantly update your website.
There is only one place to begin, and this is by updating your website regularly. What worked last year is going to be different than this year. So your website needs to be fresh. This means new content and continual improvements in user experience and security.
If your website needs to be updated and features old content, this creates a distinct lack of trust between consumers and your brand. They won’t want to engage, so you will struggle to secure conversions.
Make it easy for visitors to contact you.
Think about it: if you were to visit a website and you could not find any contact information, would you trust the company behind the site? It’s unlikely.
It is important to ensure your contact information is prominent and up-to-date. You should also provide several different methods of communication, from your telephone number to live chat.
Social proof is a theory based on the fact that we, as humans, are influenced by what other people do and say. If someone else engages with a product, we will be more inclined to do so.
This is why you need to display social proof. You can incorporate this into your website, from customer review websites to social media counters. All this comes together to validate your website and show that others have a positive opinion of your brand.
Use real pictures
Aside from the points already mentioned, it is a good idea to use real photographs rather than stock photos.
While there are some great websites for stock photography, the trouble is that everyone is using them. If you have the same photos on your site as thousands of other websites, you will weaken your brand identity, and this will cause customers to become confused about your brand identity. This, in turn, makes it very hard to build trust.
Choose a web host with care.
A lot of people need to realize that their choice of web host has an impact on how customers view their brand. However, your host will have a huge influence on the performance of your website, from the speed of it to the security in place. You must choose a quality host like Hostinger to ensure your website will perform effectively.
Display trust seals
Another way to make your site appear more trustworthy is to display trust seals. A trust seal is an icon or logo that instills confidence in website visitors.
Although there are some exceptions, the vast majority of these trust seals are provided by cybersecurity businesses. Therefore, to display these seals legally, you must have purchased a cybersecurity product from the company.
Some of the most widely recognized site trust seals include BuySafe, Trust Guard, McAfee Secure, Shopify Secure, and SiteLock.
Use HTTPS
Finally, encrypting your website with the HTTPS protocol is also importantencrypt your website with the HTTPS protocol. The vast majority of sites on the web have made this switch. If you have not already, you will only get left behind.
HTTPS refers to how data is exchanged between your website’s visitors and your website.
The key difference between HTTPS and HTTP is that the former will encrypt data, which means it turns your data into illegible code so that hackers cannot read it. As a result, many Internet users today will only enter HTTPS websites.
So there you have it: the complete guide to creating a trustworthy website. If you follow the steps above, you can create a website that makes your potential customers feel safe and trust your brand.
Author bio – Kerry is an experienced content writer with a First Class Hons Degree in Multimedia Journalism. She currently works for UK Web Host Review, providing content on SEO, web hosting, web performance, UX, web security, web design, and much more.