Learn how to build a trustworthy website

In an online business, we always strive to achieve more sales and convert more visitors. That is why most of the companies come up with exciting discounts, giveaways, contests and advertisements from time to time. All these activities are done to draw more buyers to the funnel. But do you know what major point we are missing here?

Yes, that is none other than trustworthiness. In simple words, your customers should have optimum trust in your brand and products. Then only your company can enjoy a stable audience. Without trust, the sales graph will fluctuate often. But how you can bring that sense of confidence in your avatars? There are many ways, but the most effective of them is to remodel your normal website into a trustworthy site!

In this article, we are going to load you with tips and tricks for building up a trustworthy website. First of all, let us know the required components –

1. Table of Contents

   Reputation

2. Security

Now we will delve deeper and know what these words actually mean!

1. Reputation

People would always select a reputed brand over an unknown product. So, your first duty is to make a reputable brand image for yourself. You have to assure people that the products are of premium quality and the delivery service is top-notch. If you succeeded in proving these points, your sales figure will scale up.

A website can reflect your reputation in several ways. You just have to find what perfectly suits your business. Some people will look for the experience factor or your years of service. While some can be impressed by a large social media following. Again a part of population will praise the awards you have achieved. So, check your customer demographic to get insight on customer expectations. Let us throw light on some popular representation of reputation –

Total customers served till date

Many online brands highlight their number of clients on the homepage itself. The idea is to tell the new visitors that the brand has already served plenty of customers. Here are some big brands applying this trick-

• Braintree- A payment gateway providing company. It boasts a list of some top companies who are using it’s service.
• Stripe- This website has a slogan reading, “ Thousands of websites use Stripe”
• Brightcove- The site showcases the logos of websites which are powered by it.
• SendGrid- An email marketing service provider. It has a live counter showing the number of mails delivered by it.

Like these companies, you too can share your record of previous customers. Try to tell it in an quirky and powerful way such that your service quality is glorified.

Mentions by press

Some companies reflect their credibility by including the media reviews on their home page. This highlights the fact that a brand is acknowledged by some reputed journalists!

• Fancy Hands – On it’s homepage, you can take a look at the quotes given by some influential magazines like Time, Forbes. They have stated the company as a top startup in the world.
• Nest- It has a featured column showcasing the press logos and quotes.
• Carsabi- It just exhibits the logos of famous journals who have appreciated it.

Testimonials

These have a lot more impact than press mentions and awards. Because customers tend to believe real clients who have actually been benefited.

• Sprout Social – On this website you will find the customer feedback at the footer. Still, it is a massive contributor of reputation for the site.
• Walker Corporate Law- Along with the genuine feedbacks, the real photos of clients have been added to ensure originality.
• Everlane- Has an innovative display of sliding customer reviews. Once you click on any of these, you will be taken to the real tweets.

Experience

Some companies intelligently emphasize their years of experience on websites. Let us see how can you do this.

• Eddie Bauer – The main slogan states the year since which the organization started.
• Kemps- Title tag itself reads, Quality since 1914.
• Lower My Bills- Quotes it’s 10 year anniversary on the main logo.
• Go To Assist – Writes the years of service and calls itself as pioneer in it’s field.

Awards

You may have noticed the awards section on various websites. These rankings are given for the customer service by many business bureaus. It is quite helpful if you are starting a new business. You can put it at the most eye-catching segment of your site.

• Vitacost- A bar across the header contains a record of all the awards it has received.
• HubSpot and Zappos- The award section is placed at the bottom of the main page. As they are already dominant in their domain, they have kept the awards in a less prominent position.

Along with rewards, you can also get some seals that symbolise your high quality service. These top badges are provided by Business Bureau, STELLA Service and Bizrate.

Social media reputation

You can also exhibit your large fan following by getting a social media widget.

• The Hill – A news daily showcases the Facebook likes right next to it’s main logo. This informs the visitor that already many people are reading news from this site.

You can also add a Twitter or Google Plus widget and boast your huge audience.

Free trials

When you offer free trials, the customer finds it secure to sign up with you. Because he has nothing to lose. Apart from that, you are also promising that after taking the free trial, people will definitely purchase the premium plan.                     Entertainment Biggies like Netflix, Spotify are known to offer lucrative trial packages, which lures the people more to try their service.

Some other tactics you can apply to enhance your reputation are below

• Build a professional looking website that reflects your expertise.
• Include a privacy policy at the end of your homepage.
• Steer clear from spelling mistakes and grammatical blunders.
• Make sure that the transaction process is detailed. Until a product is delivered, keep updating your customer about the progress.

Now we come to the security factor!

E-commerce

Renowned companies like Amazon don’t require a security seal because people have enough trust in them. But the less popular companies like the Blue Nile, Good Rock have all their pages marked with security logos, seals ns, and badges.

SaaS companies

Security is very important here so many brands highlight their security badge differently.

• Box- All the security details are provided on the home page
• FreshBooks- At the end of their homepage.
• Mint- Explains it’s security policy just below the call to action.

But the main question is how can you verify your site for security protection?

The first work is to register an SSL certificate for your site. Some of the trusted providers you can go to are :

DigiCert, GeoTrust, GoDaddy(Malware and identity theft protection), RapidSSL(Cheapest), Secured by Thawte, Trustwave, VeriSign

When your site is secured with an SSL certificate, a padlock symbol will appear in the address bar of your viewer. The customers will be assured that their sensitive information will stay secure in your possession. And they will be more willing to shop from your site.

So, we described how can you implement the two components namely- reputation and security. By incorporating these two values in your website, you will surely observe a tremendous growth. Then what are you waiting for? Go and apply the above-said strategies to perfect your website!