Six steps: how to improve the credibility of your website

Customers will only buy from your website if they trust your business. They decide within a few seconds whether they want to stay or leave your website. Here are six things that you can do to make your website more credible.

how to build a credible website

When do website visitors trust a website?

The UX magazine has a good definition of ‘trust‘:

  • Your company is moral. Trust involves the belief that your company is law-abiding and fair while also showing that you cares about your customers.
  • Your product will do what it claims to do. A consumer has expectations that your company’s product will live up to its claims, which are assumed to be accurate and unbiased.
  • Information will be correct, complete, and unbiased. When people trust the information and choices presented, they are less likely to feel a need to go elsewhere.
  • Your product or service has quality. People want to feel confident in their choices and we all want to feel confident that our digital devices are quality products that will safely hold important data.
  • “A company will protect me.” Security and privacy are increasingly a key concern for consumers as they navigate the digital world. People want to know that your company has their best interests in mind. Will your company safely store my personal credit card information and keep sensitive information private?

So what can you do to show your website visitors that your website is trustworthy?

Step 1: Improve your website design

Good looking websites with a professional design are much more trustworthy than websites that look as if they were created by amateurs. You should have beautiful web pages with functional design. A good website makes people want to learn more about your business and your projects.

Step 2: Show your visitors that you’re real

If possible, show pictures of your team on your website. If you have customer testimonials or other third party rankings, show them on your web pages. People tend to trust a business more if other people tested it before.

Show real people who interact with your product and include a strong message and a clear call-to-action on your home page.

Step 3: Make sure that your website is up-to-date

Beyond just having consistent uptime, fast load speeds, as well as a custom domain—there’s a few other things you can do to ensure the overall health of your website. Be sure that all of the information on your website in regards to shipping, contact information, product information and more is all up to date. Take some time to go through product descriptions, as well as old blog posts to ensure that there isn’t any outdated information that may be misleading to a potential customer. A good way to subtly display that you’re on-top of things is to have some sort of press page, or press mentions displayed directly on your storefront. For instance, here’s what Freshly Picked includes on their storefront after being featured on Shark Tank and Ellen:

Step 4: Remove errors

Of course, your website should have consistent uptime, fast-loading pages and a custom domain name. In addition, your web pages should not contain broken links, spelling mistakes, or other errors. You can check this with the website audit tool in SEOprofiler.

Step 5: Show potential clients that you are active online

Keep your customers up-to-date by regularly publishing articles in your blog. If you do not have a blog, use social media to get in touch with your clients.

Step 6: Show your address

If it is difficult to find your contact information, people won’t trust your business.

The easier it is to contact you, the better. List your full address, use contact forms, email, live-chat, phone, and social media.

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Tom Cassy

Tom Cassy is the CEO of SEOprofiler. He blogs about search engine optimization and website marketing topics at “http://blog.seoprofiler.com”.