How to Build Instant Credibility Online with Your Website

Let’s be real—no one’s going to buy from a website that looks sketchy, even if your offer is amazing. So how do you make sure your site instantly says “You can trust me” from the first click? That’s exactly what we’re breaking down in this episode.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Why Website Trust Matters
• 4:09 Top Elements That Build Credibility
• 9:07 Red Flags That Destroy Trust
• 13:36 Quick Website Trust Fixes
• 15:26 Challenge and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:52

Today we're talking about customer trust on our website. And let's be real if you've ever gone to a website and taken a look at it and you instantly didn't feel trust, did you stay? Try to think about that. So, even if your offer is amazing, if your website doesn't immediately evoke trust in the potential customer they're just going to leave. Evoke trust in the potential customer they're just going to leave. So how do you make sure your site instantly says you can trust me from the first click? That's exactly what we're breaking down in today's episode. So let's dive in.

Carrie Saunders: 1:28

Welcome to the e-commerce made easy podcast. I'm your host, Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine month-old. My main goal To help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry and even more than that in web development, I have seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech into easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place. So sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together. Welcome back to the show.

Carrie Saunders: 2:01

Today we're talking about customer trust on our website and making sure that we are creating instant customer trust. So let's first talk. Why does credibility matter, especially online? Well, even in person, first impressions happen in seconds, and online is even more important. Visitors are judging even before they read anything on your website. Just kind of like when we meet a person for the first time, it's really hard for us not to go ahead and judge them just from our first initial impression. It's just human nature and it's something we'd have to work towards to make sure that we don't jump to conclusions. But with websites, they seem like inanimate objects and don't seem like a person's behind them, unless the website's built in a way that exudes customer trust and exudes personality and that there's a human behind it. So a legit website actually builds trust, and trust converts. That's the whole point of making our website great is we want to make sure that it converts right, and we need to do that via customer trust. So you could have the best offer in the world, but if your site feels off, you're going to be losing sales.

Carrie Saunders: 3:12

So what are some of the top elements that instantly build credibility and trust with our online audience? So first, a professional design. It doesn't have to be super expensive or super fancy, but if it's professional and clean, that is very, very much an important part of customer trust. Trust. Think about a website you went to that was really disorganized and had things everywhere, or one that had way too many colors or way too many fonts. You probably got confused and, a bit you know, weren't sure of the website because there wasn't any cohesiveness to it. Or one that didn't have any white space at all. You probably couldn't land your eyes on anything to even make a judgment. You probably just got land your eyes on anything to even make a judgment. You probably just got glassy eyes and couldn't even look at the website. So we want to make sure we have a professional design and again, like I said, it doesn't have to be super expensive. It just really needs to have a clean layout, modern fonts and consistent brand visuals, which means we're not mix matching styles of photos, we're not mix matching odd colors, for example.

Carrie Saunders: 4:20

And then the next thing that we can do to really build instant customer trust is clear messaging. We need to make sure we're conveying immediately what you do, who it's for and how it helps them. We want to minimize any confusion here and really make it be clear and loud. Whenever we try to have our messaging speak to everybody, then it won't speak to anybody. I'm sure you've heard that before and it comes true on our websites too. And so we want to make sure we are picking out that truly ideal customer who is the really target customer we want to be working with. It doesn't matter that there are also other customers you want to be working with. When you target that one, most likely those other customers are also going to get a sense of relation to your messaging. So making sure that messaging is very clear is really helpful. And then there are trust signals we can add to our website so you can have client logos, you could have testimonials we talk about this a lot on the podcast. If it's appropriate, you could have some certifications If you're a certified coach, if you're a Better Business Bureau certified, things like that If you're e-commerce and secure payment icons also really help. So having those easy to recognize trust signals are great.

Carrie Saunders: 5:45

And then we want to have an about us page. We talk about the about us page on this podcast quite a bit. And have a face on it, have your photo on it, even if your photo is not the prominent thing on your homepage. Having a photo on your about page is great. If you're a team, if you're a large e-commerce team, have a photo of some of your team at least Real humans helps evoke real business. So adding those photos a personal touch what's your company stand for can really also help. You know, make a customer trust, get a bit more clear to that potential client. And then we also want to have easy navigation. We don't a confused mind says no, we don't want to have clever headlines in our navigation and we don't want it to be too cluttered. So if a user gets lost or overwhelmed they're going to leave. So we want to make sure our navigation is very easy to understand and is very clear.

Carrie Saunders: 6:44

And then I harp on this a lot on the podcast, but contact info or help options. Like I said before, if you've been a regular listener of our podcast, a couple of years ago, when I was building actually the website for this podcast, I wanted to use a specific type, a specific template for WordPress for the show notes website and I was really like this one template and I couldn't find any contact information for that company and I almost didn't buy the template, but I really wanted this template, so that kind of overcame. My customer trust issue is I really wanted the thing, but then what I found is, after I bought it, I actually needed some help and had some questions on it and it was really hard to get ahold of them and it was really frustrating for me. And we don't want our customers to either feel frustrated if they do need to get ahold of you or don't have that confidence that they can get ahold of you if they're having issues with the product they bought, the services they bought, the course they bought. So making sure your contact info is very clear, it is very easy to get a hold of you or you have some really good help options. But again, I really recommend at least having an email. An email form and or phone number is great, and obviously an address, if you can, is really helpful.

Carrie Saunders: 8:06

And then let's talk about what are some of those red flags that really make us feel like a website is off, because we want to make sure that we're not accidentally throwing up any of these red flags too, even if we do. The other list of items, the things that build trust. Well, we want to make sure we don't accidentally have these red flags in there. So we want to make sure that our logos aren't blurry this is kind of a little bit obvious, but I want to make sure that we also you know, talk specifically about this or poor quality graphics. If they're not crisp and clear, then that's going to feel unprofessional. It kind of goes with point number one on the previous section. Or if you have very obvious stock photos that feel really generic or cheesy I see this sometimes a lot it's really easy to find those stock photos and be like, oh, this is nice, it's good enough, right? You know, we want to make sure whatever stock photos we use are actually on brand and on point and they don't feel too generic or cheesy. You can add your own text to them to help them feel more personalized and more like. Yours can really help with that.

Carrie Saunders: 9:10

And then if you don't have a social proof or credibility indicators, that can be a really big red flag that could evoke that you are brand new in business. Now I do want to say if you are brand new in business, I bet you have done things with people before you started your business that they could talk about. That helps convey what you bring to this business that you have. So if you're listening and you're brand new, think about previous coworkers or people you've worked with. You could even you know it could even be. You know teenage years, what you work with. You know you may have been really hardworking and on time and all those things. So come up with creative testimonials. That are obviously true, but if you're brand new in business, you can get creative like that.

Carrie Saunders: 9:57

If you've established business, make sure you have some of your current clients raving about you on your website. You know, just ask. We find that clients don't get reviews or ratings unless they ask we're all busy. So make sure you're asking your clients regularly for feedback and for reviews. And then if we have vague language or too much marketing speak, that can be a good bit of a turnoff. So we want to be talking like we're a real human as much as possible on our website. So make sure that we're being very specific. Make sure that you're using your words, not somebody else's, and if somebody's helping you with your copywriting or your marketing, make sure they have interviewed you really well and really gotten to know your personality so that it can shine through the copy that they create for you.

Carrie Saunders: 10:46

Some other red flags are broken links, outdated blog posts or this one really gets me and I always notice this one copyrighted dates from 2021 or some previous year, so make sure your copyright dates at the bottom of your website are current. Most web applications can let you use a special code that will get this year's year and then you never have to change it. But then let's go back to the broken links too. This is something that you can figure out with Google Webmaster Tools or Google Search Console. The old way is to say Google Webmaster Tools. I always say that so you can use that to see if you have a lot of 404s on your web page. That's a really good tool to look at about once a month to make sure you don't have broken links you didn't realize.

Carrie Saunders: 11:36

And then outdated blog posts. So we have on our main website, our BCS engineering website, a long history of blog posts, but you're going to see brand new ones when you come to our website. Sure, we have the old ones that have been there for a while in our archives, but if you go to our blog, you're going to see fresh, new ones right now. So if you're blogging on your website, I highly recommend you update your blog and create a new blog post once a month at minimum. That helps show that you're still in business and you still care about your customers.

Carrie Saunders: 12:12

If you had a blog but you haven't had a blog post in over a year, then that can be a bit of a problem for our visitors. They might lose some customer trust in there and then on, like we said on the contact page, a big red flag is no way to reach you. That's what I found with that one template website that I ran into. It was really hard. I don't even remember how I found the contact information, but I remember pre-buying it. I couldn't find it on the website. I think it was via my receipt.

Carrie Saunders: 12:41

So there's some quick ones that I want you to look at implementing today. I want you to go and look on your website. Is there a stock photo that you can swap out with a real one of you or a product? I'm not saying all stock photos are bad, but we need to make sure we're mixing them in with some real ones of either your products, your services or you, and then can you add a new testimonial or a client quote to your homepage. Look and see what you can add today. For that. Also, do you need to update your footer with a current year and a privacy policy? Make sure your footer isn't out of date, and then you can run your website through a mobile checker tool, especially since mobile is first is key, and you can do this. Actually, almost every single browser out there that I'm aware of has a mobile browser view mode, and then you can also just Google mobile checker tools to get you some easy mobile checker tools.

Carrie Saunders: 13:39

So we talked a lot about customer trust here, but why is it so important? It is step one in the conversion. It is step one in the sale. You can't convert on your website if people don't trust you, and credibility is what keeps someone on your page long enough to consider your offer. So it's super important. This is like number one in reviewing your website. It's one of the first things we work on inside our course that we have, and also with our clients. I want to make sure that customer trust is loud and clear on their website, because when you fix that trust factor, conversions will follow.

Carrie Saunders: 14:15

So I challenge you as an extra bonus, take 10 minutes today to visit your homepage with fresh eyes. Would you trust your site if you'd never heard of you before. If not, start small start with some of these tips, because a small credibility tweaks can really make big conversion wins. Even the tiniest tweak can really really help. So I challenge you to do that today after this podcast episode. Thanks so much for listening to the e-commerce made easy podcast. If you love this episode, please be sure to share it with a business friend and rate us on your favorite podcast player. That helps us reach other people just like you to help them with their website. And if you'd love to find a great community on Facebook where we love helping each other and lifting each other up with website and website technology and conversions, be sure to click on the link in the show notes to join our free Facebook group and we will see you there.