How Trustworthy is Your Site? Check Now with This Two-Step Trust-Check
Dating is exactly like browsing online: you meet someone new (perhaps a new brand), start getting to know them, and then they start talking about all of the impressive things they’ve done. Sounds too good to be true right? Are they even telling the truth? This raises the question, why don’t you believe they are telling the truth? Being that you two just met, you probably don’t trust the person unconditionally.
By definition, trust is the confidence placed in a person or thing. Tying our dating analogy back to browsing online, someone who has never heard of your brand or service has no insurance of reliability. This lack of reliability breeds fear and this fear is what causes users to bounce and exit from your site. So, is your site trustworthy in your visitors’ eyes? Find out with this two-step trust-check.
Trust-Check #1: Why You Need to Build Brand Trust First
When websites start pushing product information before they have established a level of trust, users will read about product at their highest point of skepticism. Knowing that visitors are innately reserved means that you’ll first need to establish a reason for them to believe you are who you say you are. One of my favorite ways of countering this is showing a client list or awards as soon as they first land on your site. Placing these items on the top of your homepage or landing page will quickly validate who you are and add more weight to what you say after.
Trust-Check #2: Close the Deal with Site Security
Now that users trust your business a bit more, the most important trust-check you need to do is ensure that they trust your site security enough to give you their private information. According to TNS, an independent research firm, almost 70% of online shoppers canceled their transaction because they didn’t “trust” the transaction. And of that 70 %, 53% stated that the presence of a seal would have prevented their cancellation. The last thing you want is a user interested in your product and exiting your site at the last second because they don’t feel that their information is safe.
Most websites have already paved the way for this by adding site security with Norton or VeriSign – all you need to do is make sure the user is aware of your site security as well. Add site security seals prominently next to the primary CTAs such as “Submit” for lead-gen or “Checkout” for e-commerce. Also important to note that nowadays if your site is still HTTP instead of HTTPS visitors may exit way before they even read your headline (learn more about HTTPS).
Did Your Site Pass the Trust-Check?
These are obviously not the only ways to establish trust. Some users will need more information than others depending on the industry or product being sold. However, by running this simple two-step trust-check you can determine if your site is off to a good start.
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