By Jon Clark, managing partner at Moving Traffic Media, a New York digital agency offering SEO, PPC and Amazon marketing services.
No matter what type of business you run, there’s one essential ingredient you need: trust.
If your brand is trusted, people will feel comfortable purchasing services or products from you. It really is that simple.
But how do you go about building trust? Well, it all starts with your website. After all, it is often the first thing people will see about your business.
Considering that, I’m going to delve deeper into six different things that can make a website appear untrustworthy. If you notice any of these, it’s time to make some changes to your website.
1. A Sparse Website That’s Lacking In Content
You might have heard the saying, “It’s always the quiet ones.” When someone is quiet, we often assume they’re up to no good. The same can be said for an empty website. If your website doesn’t have a lot of information or content, viewers could assume you’re hiding something.
Whether you sell hand creams or you offer IT security services, people want to know more about those behind the brand. What are your credentials? Who’s on your team? Needless to say, this information must be displayed attractively. Make sure it’s easy for the viewer to digest.
2. Difficult Or Outdated Design
When a viewer forms an opinion of your website, chances are that design is going to play a massive role in their assessment. A person’s first impression of a website is often based on visual design alone. If your website takes a while to load, is difficult to navigate or has an outdated design, your credibility will be questioned. To boost trustworthiness, a few design issues you need to fix should you notice them include the following:
• A site that is slow to load;
• A mixture of color schemes and fonts;
• Difficult navigation;
• Small fonts that are difficult to read;
• Spinning, scrolling or blinking text;
• Outdated graphics;
• An unoptimized website that doesn’t operate properly on small devices, such as smartphones;
• Flashing letters;
• A lack of original photographs;
• Poor-quality videos and images.
3. No Customer Reviews
Most people today will take their time to read reviews before they decide to purchase a product or go forward with a particular service. If someone lands on your website and cannot find any reviews, it can give off the impression that you’ve either not had a lot of customers or your company is a scam. Neither is ideal.
It’s vital to incorporate a good number of consumer testimonials on your site for possible customers to read. I’d advise that you install a widget from an independent review website to display reviews. People are becoming more and more skeptical of companies writing their own reviews, so this is a great way of reassuring people that your reviews are genuine.
4. Images That Aren’t Relevant Or Have Been Sourced From A Free Stock Website
As humans, we’re very much visual creatures. We don’t want to view big blocks of text. We like this information to be broken up with visual media, such as images, illustrations and diagrams.
However, this doesn’t mean you should shove images into your content. Any image must either demonstrate your value proposition or illustrate your page’s narrative. If your website contains images that have little relevance, viewers could get confused, which could dilute your brand image.
Another piece of advice I have is to avoid relying on free stock image websites too much. I know it’s tempting. After all, they’re free and it’s highly convenient. However, remember that a lot of other websites will use these images, so they don’t add any originality to your website.
5. Not Having An SSL Certificate
One thing that many consumers are worried about today is their online security. All you need to do is turn on the news to see stories about identity theft and data breaches. This has made customers naturally more concerned about the steps businesses are taking to protect their data.
There’s no magic wand or formula that provides protection from a data breach. You need to have a multi-layered approach that involves many tactics. Installing an SSL certificate is one of these. This is considered a standard for businesses today. An SSL certificate adds an extra layer of encryption, ensuring that all sensitive data and log-in information is protected.
6. Trying To Get Too Much Information From Website Visitors
An excellent way of capturing data is to have gated content on your website. A good example of this is a blog post that’s only available for members. To view the post, viewers must submit some information and become a member.
Nevertheless, make sure you don’t ask for too much information about the viewer. If you’re greedy and try to extract too much data, people could feel that their privacy is being invaded and might wonder why you’re asking for so much information about them.
It’s a balancing act that you’ve got to get right. Visitors could also undervalue your content if you don’t ask for enough information. It’s all about avoiding either extreme. Ask for too much or too little information, and you won’t appear genuine. This will hurt your website conversions.
The best way to figure out what information you should ask for is to think about what information you would feel comfortable giving to another website in order to view some content or become a member.
How trustworthy is your website?
If any of these points have started to ring alarm bells in your mind, there’s no need to panic. However, you will need to make the changes required so your website is viewed as trusted and credible. If you don’t, your conversions could suffer along with your brand image.
