Building a website is just one step of the journey to bringing your business online. Once your website is up and running, the next step is bringing site visitors a.k.a. Website traffic. However, just bringing traffic does not guarantee sales. You as a company or entrepreneur need those site visitors to trust your brand and products/services. Instilling consumers’ trust in your brand via your website can be tricky, but there are a few simple boxes you can tick to make sure that as a brand, you have done everything possible to build trust on your site.
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HTTPS—SSL Certificates
Today most people do not want to deal with websites that do not use encryption. In fact, some search engines will regularly give users a warning that the site is unsafe and that their connection to the website will not use encryption. Immediately when these ‘web browser app’ warnings pop up, it automatically places an element of distrust in potential buyers’ minds. Consequently, your business could end up losing readers, customers, and/or sales.
Plus, there are numerous publications on IT websites that also encourage people to only use websites protected by SSL encryption. These publications even tell non-tech savvy users how to spot whether a website is using encryption by instructing them to check that ‘HTTPS’ is present at the beginning of the URL. Therefore, when you buy a domain and sign up for hosting, make sure you buy an SSL certificate with it. Usually, when you package and purchase these elements together, you will get a better deal than buying each of them individually.
Buy a Domain with Your Brand Name
When you buy a domain, always use your brand name for your business website. If your brand name is already in use for .COM or for your country extension such as .US or .CO.UK, then look for .NET domains. These are some of the most trustworthy extensions. It is rarely done, but you should also avoid buying a domain name with numbers. It might seem like a great idea because people remember numbers, but all this does is encourage people to remember your brand as just another number. Also, try to avoid hyphens if possible.
Add Company & Location Information on The Website
Adding Google Maps if your business has a physical location will give people a sense of security when dealing with your website. The site visitor will feel that because there is a physical address, then there is someone, somewhere, that can be held accountable should something go wrong. Also, having a registered address and company name means people can use local government business websites to check your company’s registration. For instance, in the UK, there is the ‘Companies House’ website, which allows people to search for registered businesses in order to check if the company exists. All this helps people interacting with your website to research your company and establish a trust relationship.
Register Website Ownership Info to a Known Business
Although some companies and people have good reason to hide the ‘Who Is’ information when registering a site, it is often not wise to do so if you want to offer complete transparency. For example, if you want to make a purchase from an eComm site, then you may check that you can trust the company behind the website. Often some people will want to see who registered the website and whether that address matches the registered company address on the website.
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Write an Extensive About Us Page with Team Information
Websites with About Us pages give the site visitor a chance to see who your company is and what it is all about. The about us story should explain why your business began, what it does, who owns the company, which partners the company has, and a section with your team members can also go on this page. In essence, an about us page can be similar to your landing pages for services and even your homepage that condenses all your company services in one place.
However, rather than a section explaining what each service does, each section will explain why website visitors interested in your brand should trust your company and its services.
Add Social Media
Today one way to build trust is to add social media icons on your website so site visitors can click through to your Facebook, Instagram, and/or Twitter accounts to find out more about your business. You can have pictures of staff, contact details, company information, and another location pin using Facebook locations. If you use Facebook, then set up a business page that allows people to ‘like’, ‘follow’, and ‘comment’ on your posts. Even more valuable to building trust for your website is allowing people to leave star ratings on Facebook.
When people see lots of 5-star ratings, they will then be more inclined to trust the content and/or services on your website.
Quality Content
Our seventh and final point to make is that every part of your website should use quality content. That means images, videos, infographics, web page design, ad copy, and website content. Badly written content or grainy images will immediately lose your readers and their respect. Also, badly filmed videos with bad sound quality can deter potential customers from continuing their journey through your website.
However, get all these elements correct, and you are giving your website every chance of instilling trust in its site visitors, thus making it a powerful online marketing sales tool. You can find more proven strategies for building brand trust here.
