Boost your credibility online
Small business marketing online series
Originally published in Small Business Charleston, March 2009
By Tiffany Jonas
How effectively you project an air of trustworthiness on your website can powerfully affect your bottom line. Setting visitors' concerns to rest from the start can provide you with a distinct advantage.
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If you offer a high-priced service or product, how effectively you project an air of trustworthiness on your website (and elsewhere) can powerfully affect your bottom line. It can be gulp-inducing to a customer to hand over hundreds or thousands of dollars just days, weeks, or months after they've come across your firm—maybe you know you can be trusted, but how do they know that? Setting their concerns to rest from the start can provide you with a distinct advantage.
Stanford recently came out with a list of practical guidelines for building credibility on your website. Their advice is based on three years of research that included more than 4,500 people. We'll discuss three of them here, with additional notes from my own experience in the field.
1 } Show there's an organization behind your website—one made up of real people doing real work. If your firm has a physical location, one of the easiest ways to do so is to list a physical address, post a photo of your building, and/or include a map to your address. If you work out of a home office, list your memberships with organizations like the Better Business Bureau or Chamber of Commerce, and if your firm is a corporation or limited liability company, include that somewhere on your site. (You're not off the hook when it comes to addresses, though; if you don’t want to publish your home address, rent a box at a nearby UPS Store or post office. It's not ideal, but it's better than appearing like a fly-by-night operation working out of an alley.)
2 } Highlight the expertise of your team. Visitors have come to expect some sort of "about us" section on the websites they visit; make it easy to find, and then use the space to your advantage. Do you hold a certification in your field? Are you affiliated with a respected and relevant organization? Do you have 20 years of experience in your industry? Do you regularly speak or write about your area of expertise? A succinct bio on your "about us" page is the perfect place to demonstrate why your customers are in good hands with you. For extra credibility, consider accompanying it with a professionally taken photograph of you or your team.
3 } Make sure your website looks professional. Stanford's team found that people quickly evaluate a website by visual design alone. Factors like referrals from a friend, fantastic word-of-mouth, or positive reviews on a site known for unbiased opinions can help overcome a poor design, but for the typical firm, most visitors arrive from a search engine or a substitute like YellowPages.com, and they don't know you from Adam. To be greeted by a site designed by someone without the training, software, or experience necessary, such as your nephew or receptionist, can give them the impression that you're an inexperienced start-up or worse, you're an established firm not doing well enough to pay for professional web design.
Above all, be authentic. Few people will be impressed with slick websites full of empty jargon like, "We leverage our significant knowledge in the industry to develop world-class solutions." A human tone of voice (even in written form) offering real information can go a long way.
About the author
Aio Design founder Tiffany Jonas graduated magna cum laude from the Missouri School of Journalism, a top journalism school, with a degree in advertising. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and has taken coursework toward an MBA. She is a member of Mensa, an organization for those who have tested in the top 2% of the population on a standardized intelligence test, and is also a member of the American Marketing Association and the eMarketing Association. She has been the two-time recipient of an 11-state award for design, honored at the Chicago Book and Media Show, and the New York Times called one of her book designs "well-produced and elegant." In 2008 she was named one of the Charleston Regional Business Journal's Forty Under 40, an honor recognizing individuals who have achieved professional success while contributing to the Charleston community.
