12 Steps to Establishing Web Credibility
When running a brick-and-mortar store, a business that fails to establish credibility or loses credibility will also lose customers. A store that doesn't convey a sense of trust is a business disaster.
It's the same for an online business, except that people are even more skeptical when conducting a transaction online-they can't step inside, handle the merchandise, speak with a real person. How will you know if the item you're buying is high quality? Without face-to-face interaction, who's to say if your personal information will be kept confidential? Once you hit "send," how many people will be able to access your credit card number?
The heart of the online shopping experience is building a sense of trust, and there may be several reasons for a lack of trust when shopping online. It's important to go the extra distance in creating an atmosphere of credibility when inviting customers to shop at your online store.
As much as web technology may have changed in the years since ecommerce became standard, this particular aspect of web design hasn't. If anything, it's even more important now, as the fields of competition increase for web sales and online businesses must work harder to distinguish themselves from the pack.
While a customer may not be 100% sure they can trust you until after they click the "submit" button and receive their order, these 12 guidelines represent tangible steps any site owner can take to make sure they are presenting the most credible appearance possible. Think of it as 12 small things you can do to turn a potential customer into a long-term relationship.
1. Provide third-party support for information you present
Most businesses have too many "we" messages on their websites: "We are the best at" or "We offer the highest quality". A much more effective approach is to use consumer-focused statements and provide support for that from third-party sources. Cite references and resources with statistics backing up any claims that you make. When a third-party source confirms what you claim, your message ceases to be mere marketing jargon and becomes credible fact. However, choose your sources carefully. Sources that quote other sources or are non-authoritative deplete your credibility bank. Independently funded studies, college websites, government pages, medical offices, etc, are authoritative sources that can supply statistics and facts.
Your customers can often be your best sources for third-party support. Link to a testimonial page that describes how satisfied your customers are. Avoid at all costs the temptation to fake resources, research, or comments. Aside from the fact that it's difficult to do that and not have your visitors see right through it, if anyone finds out you've done that, then your credibility really will evaporate. If you have people and results to back up your claims, use them, or wait until you do have them.
Another thing to keep in mind is not going overboard with the links to references, resources and people. Too much of that could lead to a tangle of a website where your visitors are jumping around or leaving your site to find your supporting information, a situation that would be a hindrance more than a help.
2. Show that there's a physical organization behind your site.
Include all of your official contact information in an easy to find location on the site. Respond to phone messages and email everyday. Answer phone calls rather than having a machine pick up. Any delay in responding to or answering inquiries makes it that much more likely that the customer found one of your competitors to answer their question more quickly. And getting message machines or answering services makes them suspicious that you won't be there when they really need you.
3. Use logos and links
Utilize your professional affiliations as a means of establishing credibility.
ScanAlert, now owned by McAfee, is a widely known provider of website security services. Another trusted organization is Authorize.net, which provides secure credit card payment gateways. Since 2005, WhosClickingWho.com has been providing services to audit clicks on Pay-Per-Click ads. This service monitors who is clicking on your ads, like competitors, and helps you eliminate click fraud. Organizations like this provide certification seals that can be added to your site. These logos and links have been shown to increase consumer confidence in a site. When placed on a website near email signups, shopping cart, and checkout, logos like this show the consumer that you adhere to the most secure business practices.
A watchdog organization, TRUSTe (http://www.truste.org), is the leader in certifying web privacy practices and protecting consumers who visit sites with the TRUSTe seal. Consumers understand that sites with the TRUST seal follow privacy best practices, and that the organization will resolve disputes if there is any misuse of their private information.
A chamber of commerce, professional organization, or the Better Business Bureau (BBB) are recognized by most people as trusted organizations. In particular, the BBB provides a logo and link to place on your website so visitors can view your BBB profile. Membership in the BBB is not free, but it a widely recognized organization that holds business to high standards, so it's a price that could be worth it.
4. Highlight your team's experts and respected affiliates.
Allow your visitors to get to know you and your team. That personal touch can make the difference in them feeling like you really are an expert in your field. Team member bios are a good place to start. Believe it or not, people considering doing business with a company really do look at these pages, and they are often a turning point. It's human nature to choose something that feels more familiar and comfortable.
5. Show that there are real people behind the site and in the organization.
There is a fine balance between sharing personal information so potential customers get to know you and sharing too much, which leads to an unprofessional appearance. People want to feel that they are doing business with people who have a similar mindset to themselves, people they have some sort of connection with. They are counting on you to be the expert, but they also want to know that you are a real person with real-world knowledge and experience and outside interests.
6. Make it easy to contact you.
This is really a key point of the credibility puzzle. Authoritative sites post phone numbers, email addresses, physical address, fax number, etc., in a conspicuous spot. It's fine to have a contact form for your primary email correspondence, but don't forgo the official address and phone number. If a visitor finds only one method of contact, they will feel that they will have less options if there's any sort of a problem, which will go a long way toward making them feel like you are not a legitimate business. Give your visitors multiple ways to contact you.
Too much contact, however, might be a bad thing. A personal touch is great for customer service, but if your website lists your home phone number or personal cell number, it might give customers the impression that the business is too small to be legitimate. If you operate out of your home, establish a toll-free number, which carries with it a sense of professionalism and legitimacy.
7. Design your site so it is appears professional and matches the site's purpose.
A "mom and pop" look to a website may be fine for many small industries and may in fact be a benefit if your product is hand-made, but you lose credibility points by having a website that doesn't look fresh, or that appears to have not been designed by a web professional.
Internet technology and style has greatly improved over the past several years, and users are increasingly tech-savvy. They have come to expect more from the sites they visit, and are used to a high degree of technology and interactivity. If your site looks very low budget, your visitors will not have much confidence in your business. Even small changes can have a great effect.
8. Make your site easy to use - and useful.
A useful site doesn't forgo flashy design for substantive content. An easy-to-use site has clear and consistent navigation. Visitors can quickly determine where to click to find the information they seek. It is easy to determine where they are on your site and how to get back to where they were. A navigation aid like breadcrumbs, that typically appears at the top of the page with links back to each previous page the user navigated to to get to the current page, make it readily apparent what page they are on in the site and what links they followed to get there. This also makes it easy to click backwards to get to the starting point.
It's been said numerous times before: a useful site has relevant and interesting content. Provide information that will help visitors make decisions, or find information to questions they are likely to have about your products and services. Think of everything someone is likely to want to know, after all, you know your subject better than anyone, right?
A useful site keeps customers interested in coming back beyond simply to buy a product. It may have videos, photos, articles, a forum, or other user-generated content that people will turn to as a resource time and time again.
9. Update your site's content often.
Your website should look current. If there is any question that the content of a site has not been refreshed in a while, people will be suspicious. After attempting to contact a local business recently, I encountered an answering machine that still had a message on it about an "upcoming" special event, which the business had held two months previously. That left me with the distinct feeling that no one really cared about the impression the business was making, and that if I needed to try to get a question answered or deal with a problem, have a media inquiry, or whatever, that I would have a hard time getting through to someone.
A website that is stale give this same impression. At the least, it's a sign that the business isn't paying attention to details, and leaves a potential customer wondering what kind of mistakes you might make with their order. The whole site doesn't have to change, of course, but there should be some part of it that is updated regularly, at least weekly.
If you have articles on your site, refresh them once in a while, and use a "last updated" time stamp on them. There are doubtless dates and ages that can be changed at least on a yearly basis. Update your FAQ page to reflect changes in shipping costs or policy information. Update your staff bios on your About Us page to keep current on ages and dates. This kind of thing seems small, but people notice. You're busy running your business and it may be hard to find the time to do these types of things, but people who visit your site will see it as a lack of attention to detail which could carry over into your professional services.
10. Use restraint with ads and offers (especially from other sites).
If it's clear to users that you are saturating your site with popup ads, contextual link ads, sponsored promo spots, affiliate links, etc., then it makes the user wonder if your primary goal is to make a quick buck by any means possible. Sure, you want to be profitable, but sites can quickly lose their credibility if the user is overwhelmed with advertisements. Not understanding how some of these ads work may result in visitors clicking away to a site advertising a product or service similar to the one they visited your site for in the first place. You might get a few pennies each time someone clicks an ad on your site, but it could be at a much greater loss to you over the long term.
11. Write clearly and directly, with your target audience in mind.
Customer segments who are young may appreciate more slangy language. Educated professionals won't. No one appreciates a writing style that makes them feel dumb or as if they're being talked down to. There's no way that you can write in a way that will perfectly suit anyone who may visit your site, but utilizing your segmentation data from your analytics program should give you a pretty good idea of who is buying from you, and you can take steps to not alienate the largest percentage of your buyers.
Writing clearly means that customers who read it have their questions answered after they are done. There's no doubt about what you offer or what it is intended for. There should be no need to resort to marketing jargon or language that doesn't clearly explain the product or service if there is nothing that you're trying to hide.
12. Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem.
A professional site uses an editing service to make sure there's no grammatical errors, typos, or other factually incorrect information. A professional appearance relies in large part on the sum of many tiny things, and typos decrease confidence. It's human to make mistakes, and even the most experienced editor may not catch every mistake, but every writer needs another pair of eyeballs to check their work.
At the very least, use a spell-check program before adding new content to your website. There are limitations to these programs, though. For instance, a spell checker won't notice "hat" is misspelled when you meant to write "that," so always check your words with a third party.
Additional errors that need to be corrected outside of spelling and grammar are broken links and page not found errors. This could be the subject of a whole separate article, but this is another example of lack of attention to detail that erodes credibility.
Summary
Credibility is not a quality that a business person only needs a little of. It may take time to earn credibility, but it can be lost with little to no effort. In fact, putting little to no effort into your site is one of the quickest ways to lose it!
Credibility is the sum of numerous small steps. These guidelines are the map to approaching building credibility in a tangible way. They represent easy to follow, easy to maintain steps that any website owner should take to provide users with a good experience on the site and earn their customer loyalty.
