Trust is the main building block to any long-lasting relationship. Without it, any relationship will break down. Your customers need to trust you to interact with you and eventually purchase from you. People buy from those they know, like, and trust. Just think about your own buying experience? Are you more likely to buy from a brand you trust or some random third-party who you don’t know anything about? One of the main reasons Amazon has excelled over its competitors is because of this. This article will focus on running a website credibility check on your website and determining your website trust factor. The higher the score, the more likely people will be willing to trust you.
Website Credibility Check: Trust Signals
Trust is more than just placing a “seal of approval” or some shiny badge on your website that says, trust me. Instead, it is a journey your client takes throughout your whole website. They must have a professional and hiccup-free journey when navigating your website to maintain their trust with you and your website. Before we go into the specific trust signals your website needs to have, these are some of the essential things your website must display. It would help if you used correct grammar and spelling throughout your website. The more mistakes a customer sees, the more red flags will begin to appear—professional, non-generic pictures, and lastly, your logo. A professional-looking logo shows that you have put time and effort into building a professional image. We suggest using your business name and colors in your logo.
Our article on Brand Personality will give you some tips on creating a logo and other powerful ways to differentiate yourself from competitors.
Clean and Modern Design
Is your website well designed and fits into the general aesthetics of your website? Or is it sloppy and in no way relates to the overall theme of your project. Suppose it is the latter you need to make changes ASAP. Your customer base will expect your website’s design to relate to what you are offering. For example, potential customers will tend to shy away if you are a campground but offer no images of your campground. We are not saying your website needs to be a work of art. Instead, it must flow cohesively with the overall theme of your project. Use colors and images that directly relate to the emotions and feelings you are trying to evoke from your audience.
Here’s a good scale you can follow:
If you feel as if you are doing this, give yourself one point. In the end, we will provide a score of X/7, which will give your website’s trust factor score. If you are not 7/7 range by the end of our website credibility check, you need to consider optimizing and redesigning your website. You are potentially missing out on thousands of dollars by not doing so.
- 0-2 – Take action immediately. You run the risk of being marked as an inactive site or a site that Google will not frequently visit
- 3-4 – Act as quickly as possible. It would be best if you improve your trust score. Do not run the risk of being listed as inactive.
- 5-6 – You have the basics down, but you need to take the last steps to improve your website. Don’t settle here. You can be missing out on thousands of potential clients a year
- 7 – The gold standards. It is essential that you keep your website up to date and ensure your trust score does not decrease.
Mobile Website Credibility Check
How optimized is your website for mobile use? Since 40-60% of your traffic can come from a mobile search in today’s world, you need to make sure your website is ready for mobile use. How responsive is your website, and have you optimized the images on your website? Those are two of the main questions we ask clients when it comes to mobile web design. Surprisingly quite a few owners admit they have never even visited their website on a mobile device. If you fall into that category, you need to check right now. Act as if you are a brand new customer experiencing your website for the first time. Is everything easy to click? Can you navigate to all your web pages easily? How do the pictures look?
If you have a responsive and optimized mobile-friendly website, congratulations, you just earned yourself another point and increased your website’s trust factor. If not, don’t worry. We are here to help. We suggest you start by reading this article on some of the most common mobile website mistakes and then reach out to us if you need any additional assistance.
Visible Contact Number: An Easy Trust Factor Signal
Proudly displaying your contact info will shine some favorable light on your website. I recently had an experience with a website that was not forthcoming with the company’s contact information, and getting a hold of customer support was next to impossible. In the end, I decided to take my business elsewhere. The point is, customers, want to be able to contact you when they need help, are looking to purchase something, or have some other inquiry into your business. We recommend displaying your “contact us” page prominently. Doing so allows customers to reach out whenever they have a question.
Give yourself another point if you already have your contact information listed. Check to ensure your phone number, contact us form or email address is not hard to find on your website. Make it easy for the customer to contact you.
Address Listed on Website
We will continue the website credibility check with an address check. Now we must admit certain websites do not need to display their address. For example, if you are a business that operates only online, there is no real reason to display your address. Nevertheless, having your address listed somewhere on your website is good business practice. Be sure to check with State and local laws to determine where you must display your address on your website. Other options include showing your service area or simply listing the State that you operate out of.
If you have your address listed, go ahead and give yourself another point for your website’s trust factor score. If not, this is one of the easier fixes. Typically address information can be found on the contact us page. Find an area where it fits and go ahead and add it.
Website Credibility Check (Major Factor): Reviews and Testimonials
Reviews and testimonials are extremely valuable to a small business. People are more likely to buy from a business with positive reviews instead of a business with no reviews or, even worse, negative reviews. Think about your own shopping experience. When you consider dining out, what’s one of the first things you check? It’s probably the reviews if you’ve never been to that place before. You want to establish some level of trust before you are willing to give that restaurant your business. So as a business owner, you should proudly display the reviews you have received on your website. You may even consider dedicating a page to reviews if you are a service-based business.
Case studies are another option for business owners who need to dive deeper into how they help their clients. You can give a detailed analysis of how you helped your client from start to finish.
If you are currently displaying reviews and testimonials on your website, you boosted your website’s trust score by another point. So, if you’re keeping track, you can be a perfect 5/5 right now. If you’re not scoring perfect, don’t worry. Keep reading along, and then reach out to us at the end if you need any assistance optimizing your website.
Updated Content: Boost Your Websites Credibility
You need to monitor your content constantly. Content that you wrote in 2015 might not be relevant today. Things change fast; this is true in nearly all industries. Make sure your content reflects the most up-to-date information on your industry. Having out-of-date content can lead your audience to think that you don’t care about your readers or maybe you’re out of business. If your latest content is over a year ago, your audience will start to feel that you are no longer actively managing your website. It’s ok to remove content that no longer ranks or is not relevant today. It shows your customers that you care and are only interested in giving them the essential information.
You’ve just earned another point if you can say you have been trimming your content and keeping everything up-to-date. If you have not, be sure to address this next time you are running maintenance on your website.
Easy Fix: Copyright Date In Footer
The easiest fix in your website credibility check is making sure the date in your footer represents the current year. If the year is 2022 and you’re still displaying a copyright date from 2019, it gives off the idea that you might not be updating your website as often as you should be. Some clients might even wonder if you’re still in business. Keeping your appearance professional is among the most overlooked things but is also among the easiest to implement.
So if you’re up to date, go ahead and give yourself another point. Did you do it? Did you score a perfect 7/7 on your website credibility check? If not, don’t worry. Some of these fixes you might be able to address today and immediately start adding to your website’s trust factor. Others might take some time and a bit more research into how you can get them squared away.
Additional Tip
Having a proper Privacy Policy, disclaimer, terms of use, etc on your website will help Google and your users trust your website. Be sure you are 100% transparent with everything you do and you will be rewarded by Google and your clients.
We Are Here to Help
As mentioned before, we have a website audit that can diagnose your website’s weaknesses and give you areas to improve on immediately. It will cover the areas we talked about in this article and more. If you’re not ready to dive into a website audit immediately we strongly suggest you take these seven suggestions and implement them as soon as possible. It will help you get on the right track and provide a boost in your SEO, website credibility, and your overall trust score.
