Website credibility is a key factor that no small business owner can afford to ignore as it affects sales and customer engagement.
Without a reliable, trustworthy site, your ability to:
- Maximize your sales.
- Communicate effectively with your customers.
- Getting your value across to potential customers
- becomes difficult and limited.
Think about your own online shopping experience. What are some of the key reasons you gave up on your online shopping cart?
The website payment gateway was not secure.
Postage or shipping costs were not disclosed until the very end of the transaction and were too expensive.
No physical address that you could easily find on the site.
Customer service phone numbers and email addresses where difficult to find.
The Return Policy website did not exist or was difficult to find.
The above are just a few reasons why web visitors might opt out of a shopping cart. If a prospect doesn’t think they are dealing with a professional, trustworthy service provider, chances are they won’t complete the online transaction.
Here are some easy-to-implement changes that can help increase the credibility of your site.
Table of Contents
How to increase the credibility of your site
1. Easy access to customer service
Make sure it’s easy for people to reach you through your site. Remember, customers love to have customer support options. For example:
- Phone
- support Email support
- Live web chat
To make it easy for customers to contact you, they can quickly ask a question about your product or service. This increases the likelihood that they will make a purchase as it helps them feel more secure in the knowledge that they can easily reach you if they have a problem.
2. Enter your contact details
Submit your contact details on your website. Sounds simple, right? You’d be surprised how many sites don’t! At a minimum, you must include your phone number, email address, and physical address, even if it’s a post office box. Often, when we cannot find contact information on a website, we immediately wonder if they are hiding something or why they are hiding this information.
Links to social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, or Instagram are also useful for building trust as they show that a business is trading and promoting itself across multiple platforms.
3. Customer reviews and testimonials
Google reviews, Facebook reviews, and customer reviews all help create an increased level of social proof. It helps build trust in your brand and your website. If you haven’t added these social icons to your site yet, I suggest you do so.
4. Safety logos and icons
Are you an accredited service provider? Do you have a CPA qualification or perhaps another well recognized qualification? If so, be sure to add these logos to your site. Including the logos of well-known institutions or industry organizations can help increase the credibility of your site.
If you run a product based business and sell online, security badges can be very helpful as well. If customers know their online transactions will be secure, they are more likely to provide their credit card details.
5. Articles and press
Don’t underestimate the power of print media. Articles, editorials, or press mentions are another great way to build your brand and build trust online. Add these articles or add a link to them on your site. If there are any great images used in the article, please share them on your website to help build your business profile again.
6. About us page
An informative About Us page containing credentials and expertise is also a great way to build trust. After the Home Page, the About Us page on the website is one of the most visited pages. Therefore, if the update does not hurt you, go for it.
7. Site security
If you are the owner of a website whose code contains a virus, then you risk losing almost all of your visitors. And not only because of the infection of the computer, many may not even notice, because not everyone uses antivirus software. Search engines tag such sites and inform users in search results that “This site may threaten your computer’s security” or “This site may harm your computer” (google.com). Of course, no sane person will go to a site with such a “black mark”.
The webcheck.top service for checking a website for viruses will help you find out if the website has a virus or if the website is clean.
Enter in the field below the website address or page you want to check and in a few seconds you will receive a diagnosis.
Take action – most are easy to implement
First of all, many of the suggestions above are easy to implement, so take a moment to browse your site and assess if there is any room for improvement.
