Building Your Website To Pre-Sell Using Trust Signals By Rodney Warner

Building Your Website to Pre-sell Using Trust Signals

Trust is an important component of any relationship. And this holds true for online businesses, website owners and their visitors or customers. This is especially critical for website owners who are hoping to leverage the benefits of an online presence to build their business.

There are a couple of proven strategies to make your website more trustworthy. These can be used when building your website to give you a running start. The best relationships are built on trust, and businesses who people consider to be trustworthy are more likely to enjoy better customer engagement, repeat customer purchases, increased conversion rates, and faster business growth. For great tips on how to build your site’s trust signals, check these “must-follow” steps below.

Contact Information, About Us Section

These two sections give visitors a valuable insight into your organization, what it represents and how they can contact you. The About Us section gives visitors a quick glimpse of the site’s purpose and the people behind it. It tells them about the brand and what they can expect from visiting the site. To build a great About Us section, site owners are advised to use images or videos to give visitors a more vivid visual image. Having a killer content can be big, but having a visual presentation is the icing on the cake.

When creating content for your Contact Us page, the more detailed, the better. A great Contact Us page makes it easier for visitors to connect with the people behind the site. This should contain basic information such as your physical address, all contact numbers (landlines, cell phone numbers), email address, and operating hours. Give your Contact Us page by giving detailed information on your location by using Google Maps. It makes it easier for customers, for example, to reach your business by giving a visual map.

Customer, Product Reviews

Giving your visitors the opportunity to share their experiences helps build trust in your community. Customer feedback is an excellent way for helping site owners get firsthand information on how their visitors feel. It also gives them the opportunity to improve their product or work on their strengths.

The key to using customer and product reviews to build trust is to have “genuine” feedback. How often have you seen websites prominently displaying great reviews but sensing that these were paid feedback? A great way of dispelling these feeling of distrust is by linking back to a 3^rd party or independent customer review site such as Trust Pilot.

Secure Payment Methods

The greatest danger with online transactions is the possibility of having your financial information being compromised or ending up in the wrong hands. Having secure payment methods is extremely important for e-commerce sites. The good news is that this feature is readily available even on content management platforms such as WordPress.

Providing a wide variety of secure online payment methods does not only build trust among potential customers but also makes it easier for them to click that payment button. Prominently displaying the different payment icons automatically establishes that your site is serious in protecting your customer’s financial information.

Payment assurance certifications is another great way of building confidence. These are usually displayed on pages where customers must enter their financial information. This is a clear sign that you are serious in keeping all financial transactions secure

SSL Certified

The first thing I check when visiting a new website is to look at the address bar and verify if it has a lock icon in the URL indicating that the site is “secure.” It also makes sense to have this protection as Google has included it in its search rank factor. Check if the website address starts with an HTTPS to ensure that you a visiting a legitimate site.

An SSL certificate guarantees that all information sent to the website is directly uploaded to the right server. This is especially critical for e-commerce sites because of the type of information it processes (personal and financial information). There are two SSL elements, the actual certificate which is used to protect customer information and the badge that informs visitors that the site is protected. You can buy cheap SSL from SSL2BUY for your website. SSL2BUY is the authorized reseller of leading certificate authorities like Symantec, GlobalSign, Comodo, RapidSSL, GeoTrust, Thawte and AlphaSSL.

Link to Social Media Accounts

Nothing talks personality or a living, breathing presence behind a website like social media. Creating links to your social media accounts means that there is a living, active persona running the website. This is also a great way of incorporating all your resources (website, social media accounts), making it seamless for your visitors to switch from one platform to another.

The use of social media is not only a good way of building trust but has also become a huge source for new traffic. It provides a more interactive medium for visitors to communicate with companies. Having the ability to quickly make a comment, gives your visitors the opportunity to communicate with site owners. Having a social media account incorporated in your site is also an excellent way of building a community around your site. This can be especially useful for building trust in your new visitors as it gives them the impression that there is an active community supporting the site.

Privacy Policy

Today’s information highway has made it possible for people to freely exchange information or get quick access to much-needed data. But this can also be considered a two-edged sword, on one side a useful tool for giving unhindered access to information and the other, a medium for gathering personal information from unsuspecting visitors.

Including a Privacy Policy on your website can go a long way in building trust among your visitors. It tells them how you intend their data and that you place a high value in protecting their personal information. A website who uses cookie data, for example, should clearly explain how data is going to be used. Informing them beforehand by using a “cookie notification” has become the norm among trustworthy websites and should be a must for any site hoping to create a trusting relationship with their visitors.

To be effective, your privacy policy must be prominently displayed on your site. It must be easily located with text clearly visible, unlike the usual insurance documents with all the important information and disclaimers contained in their “microscopic” fine print. Remember, transparency is what we’re aiming for here.

About the Author

Rodney Warner is the founder of Connective Web Design. You can find him on his company website or on Instagram.

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at [email protected] or on Twitter: @SimonCocking