People form an impression about a website that they go to in about 50 milliseconds. You have that split-second decision to gain someone’s trust. This is particularly important when you have an eCommerce business as we do at SaleSource.
Since you may be asking for their credit card here in a little bit, right? So you have to gain their trust, and there are a lot of things, that I personally look out for, and if not, I’m just going to press the back button, and go somewhere else, which brings us the first way to build that trusted site: make sure your site looks professional.
Professionalism
There are plenty of sites that look either dated or just awful, to be blunt. Having a website that looks professional is that millisecond way. We may not perceive what we’re looking at, but subliminally we can see that the website looks awful. It looks like it’s come straight out the early 2000s like they haven’t touched their website in forever. They don’t care about their website. They may not care about me so that a professional website is key.
You don’t have to be a professional web designer to do so, yes, it does help to hire someone to elevate your brand and elevate your presence, but most website builders come with templates to help you really elevate that. So if you haven’t touched your website in, say three years, it might be time to give it that renovation that it needs.
Another good idea is to choose a website platform that will cater to your needs. For instance, Shopify and WooCommerce voted the best e-commerce platforms in 2019, so it’s something worth considering.
Also, trends change fast. So you always need to make sure that you’re staying up to date with the trends. So if it has been a few years, I want to update that.
Another thing worth mentioning is that we’re always on our phones, so if your website is not optimized for mobile, it’s not going to look professional. People are going to open it up and immediately bounce, never do business with you, or your website because they have scroll and pinch, and it’s just a pain in the you-know-what.
Legitimacy
The second way to build trust with your audience is to prove that you’re real. So 62% of people say they want to see a legitimate business and believe that there are real people behind a website whenever they visit it. The way you prove that you’re real is to add some things about you and your business.
You don’t have to go around and post selfies and put all of it on your business, but what you should add photos of your location, add your employees, even the About page, add a nice little headshot of you, and really tell your story as the business owner.
People love to shop local and small. For instance, I love it whenever I go to an About Me page on a website, and it has all these great photos, and it tells you about the actual website and the people behind it. It makes you want to support that business.
The more that you can show you, the better, because like, we always say people buy from people. The ways that your audience communicates with you is huge. People don’t like talking to a robot-like. I’m sure you can recall some experiences where you’re on the phone, yelling representative. Have a real and authentic way for people to contact you, whether it’s through chat or email, or a phone call, make sure it’s an actual person picking up.
We want someone that we can speak to, and not yell at a robot for half an hour, then hang up and never talk to again. If you’re having a problem ie, shipping issues, you want to talk to a real person, you’re already upset. The last thing you need to be doing’ is yelling into your phone and only connecting with a robot.
Another way you can build trust is to show off who your big clients are. People like to know that you’re an established business, and you’re well-known. It just makes people feel safe that you’re not just going to take their money and run. The more you can show the people you’ve worked with, especially larger companies, graphic design, and web designers, they love to have just their companies that they’ve worked with right on their homepage.
The same thing is too real estate sites or commercial development. They’ll throw their property on it. Press is a really good way of doing this as well. It’s important to remember.
However, we also want to see real, authentic people and what they have to say about your business, so adding that social proof, whether it reviews from like, Google, or Yelp, Amazon FBA, or just some that they’ve given you directly. Add that directly on your website, so people will know that hey, other people that are doing business with you, and they have great things to say.
80% of consumers nowadays are checking online reviews before ever making any type of purchasing decision. So it’s really important to people to hear those reviews, and don’t be afraid to actually still include those bad reviews because most people trust reviews more if they see a couple of those bad reviews sprinkled in. People understand that things happen. So absolutely, include those reviews, and show that you’re a real business with real customers.
