How customers and other visitors view your website can greatly impact your brand’s success and conversion rates. After putting in a lot of time and effort to create a website for your brand, you definitely don’t want the design and other details to make users question your trustworthiness. No matter how valuable your product or service is to your audience, a badly designed website can undermine your best efforts.
How Lack of Credibility Could Damage Your Brand
A website that doesn’t seem legitimate may repel visitors in a variety of ways. The effects of this issue may not be immediately apparent to you; but over time, this lack of trust on the part of your users will have a negative effect on your business or brand. Two of the biggest problems that may occur as a result of poor website credibility are lower conversions and higher bounce rates. If visitors share their experiences and impressions of your website with others on social media, your business could take a significant hit from that, too. Instead of allowing this to happen, you might implement some of the following tips for effectively boosting your site credibility.
Tip #1: Show Visitors That Securing Their Information Is a Priority for You
A major red flag for many internet users is a website that doesn’t offer security in terms of personal information. The need for security software is not only important to users who are entering financial data; it’s also crucial when visitors are entering any sort of sensitive information on a site. Identify theft and other types of fraud are as rampant as ever, and reports of hacking incidents seem to be an increasingly regular occurrence, as well.
By enabling Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates on your site, you could help your visitors to feel more secure as they browse the contents of your website. While numerous users may not be aware of the ways that SSL technology can serve them (such as safeguarding them against phishing efforts to lure them to unsafe sites), a lot of people are aware that the existence of such a certificate on a website is a protective measure for their benefit. Enabling such technology may also make people feel more confident about entering personal and financial information. In fact, research indicates that using SSL can improve business sales conversions by 30 percent and ROI by 48,000%.
- Consumers trust site seals (source: Baymard Institute)
Tip #2: Consistently Display Your Contact Information
Contact information is an important detail to countless site users. When you don’t offer that information to the people who use your website, they may wonder why that is. Whether they form such a thought consciously or subconsciously, they will likely begin to question the legitimacy of your business or organization. By providing a phone number and physical address (preferably on every page of your website), you will instill a sense of transparency that is integral to credibility. An added bonus to offering your contact information on every page of your website is that site users will have that data readily available at any moment – making it that much easier to contact you with questions (which could lead to a more immediate increase in conversions).
- Hubspot footer – all contact numbers and addresses are shown sitewide (source).
Tip #3: Eliminate the Display Ads That Cause People to Exit Your Site
Some advertising is expected on a website, but certain types of ads have a tendency to annoy and even offend a broad range of users.
Google AdSense and other display ads may also advertise your direct competition, which could cause visitors to question whether you are indirectly affiliated with such businesses and concealing that information for some reason. Another negative aspect of this type of advertising is that when such an ad pops up unexpectedly, a user may click on it accidentally when trying to click on one of your site links. That one detail alone could inspire a visitor to seek products, services, and general information elsewhere. Seeing ads like this displayed on your site pages may ultimately lead potential customers to browse alternative websites.
Tip #4: Respect Customer Feedback
Customer feedback is an essential factor in improving how you serve your audience. By implementing the feedback that customers are willing to provide to you, you are showing them that what they say matters to your business; you’re also doing your business a favor by meeting the needs and wants of your customers.
Regarding the perceived credibility (and success) of your website, displaying bad reviews and honest case studies may actually boost your conversion rates (perhaps by as much as 67%, according to Reevoo CEO Richard Anson).
- Marketing agency (iWon) publishes actual case study to boost site credibility (source).
Customers who take the time to research reviews are more likely to regard a blend of positive and negative reviews as legitimate. By now, plenty of internet users are aware that some sites only display positive reviews of their products and services, and many also know that such sites may be offering paid or fake reviews. Displaying a reasonable mix of reviews that reflects a broad range of feedback could be one of the easiest ways to improve the credibility of your website and brand.
Tip #5: Optimize Your Website to Increase Its Speed
Internet users now have a shorter attention span than a goldfish, which means that innumerable visitors may choose to leave your website if it isn’t fast enough to get them the information they need in a relatively timely manner.
A typical user might also wonder whether your business can be of much service if your website doesn’t provide a quick, user-friendly experience. You can take steps to correct this problem by optimizing your site: Offer relevant content, use a responsive design that is compatible with mobile devices, and find a fast host for your website. Once you speed up everything on your site – from page load times to sign-up process to shopping cart checkout – visitors will view your website as both user-friendly and more credible overall.
Boosting your site credibility is important if you want to stay competitive and advance your brand. By taking a few steps now to improve customer experience on your website, you may considerably alter the way that customers view your business.