20 Ways To Make Your Website Trustworthy To Your Visitors

20 Ways To Make Your Website Trustworthy To Your Visitors

In this article, I’m going to explain you 20 simple ways through which you can make your website trustworthy and gain trust of your visitors.

Does your WordPress website sell products or services? Do you want to boost the sales of products and services on your site?

One of the ways to increase your sales is to inspire trust in your visitors, so they feel comfortable doing business with you.

Whether in person or online, first impressions matter. The user experience that you create for your website visitors is all important when it comes to creating a great first impression that inspires trust.

Here are 20 ways to make your website trustworthy

1. Understand who you’re speaking to

This is one of the best yet the most difficult way to make your website trustworthy.

Create buyer personas for all your customer types and direct them to pages on your site meant for each of them.

For instance, if you’re a travel agent that offers travel packages to both, families and single women, have separate pages on your website for each of them. So, you can speak to them using the language and triggers that appeal to each of them separately.

If you’re a marketing company, like HubSpot, that offers one service to organisations and another service for sales people, having separate pages that cater to each of their needs will create more trust in you as a company. See how they do it below.

Hubspot buyers separation
2. Make your website responsive

In an age where more visitors are now accessing your website from their mobile devices than their desktop, there’s no excuse for not having a responsive site. Even if you do have a mobile app, you need to ensure that people accessing your website directly also have a good user experience.

It doesn’t inspire confidence when a publication as well-known as the Times of India cannot do this. This is what their site looks like when viewed on a mobile device.

times of india mobile site

It’s hard to trust a major publication that is not even willing to invest in a responsive website.

3. Invest in a great design

If your website design is based on a crappy free theme and you’re not willing to invest in making it look good, it’s not going to inspire trust and confidence in your visitors.

Spend some money and buy a great-looking WordPress theme or get one custom designed. Make sure your fonts are easy to read, and your formatting and colors are easy on the eye.

Different colors create different associations in the minds of the viewers. Read up a bit on color psychology before deciding what sort of color scheme you want to follow on your website.

Use skeleton screen to further enhance the UX of your website.

4. Invest in great copywriting

If your website is full of grammatical and spelling errors and your copy is dull and uninspiring. Your visitors are going to be less than impressed and unlikely to trust your company.

Hire a good copywriter to write compelling copy and a proofreader to make sure there are no errors in your website copy. Don’t put up anything that hasn’t been proofread and vetted by a good editor.

Follow these copywriting tips to make a compelling copy.

5. Create a great About Us page

Your About Us page is your chance to connect with your website visitors and give a personal touch to your company site. If you’re a solopreneur, have your copywriter write up an impressive introduction and bio about you.

Also mention if you’re a member of any professional associations and have professional certifications that help you do your job better.

Your introduction should not only talk about your professional achievements, but mention your passions and hobbies as well. It makes you look more human to your visitors and helps make that personal connection that builds trust.

If you have a number of employees in your team, showcase each of them with a well-written introduction and good photograph. Don’t skimp on either the copy or the photos you use on the About Us page. Use attractive photographs taken by a professional if you want to make a good impression on your visitors.

HubSpot about us page

Your About Us page should also have a way to connect on LinkedIn with every member of your team. It gives your visitors an additional way to connect with a real person, a member of your team and ask them any questions they may have about your products and services.

If you’ve won awards for your workplace, also showcase them on your About Us page. It not only inspires trust in those visitors looking to join your organisation, but also those who want to purchase your products or services. Again, here’s how HubSpot does it on their About Us page.

Hubspot Award

6. Have a well-designed contact page

Having a contact form that doesn’t work is a deal breaker, as far as your visitors are concerned. Not only does it tell your visitors that you do not care about your user experience, but also that you don’t care enough to ensure that everything on your own website works.

Test your contact form and replace it if it doesn’t work. Also include the following details on your contact page.

  • Your company name and boilerplate (introduction) for visitors that land on your site through your contact page
  • Addresses of your main office and each of your regional offices
  • An email that works when a user clicks on it from their mobile device
  • A phone number that visitors can call from their mobile device

So, invest in a well designed contact page to make your website trustworthy.

Read the post here for more tips on creating a contact page that inspires trust and generates business.

7. Eliminate all 404 errors and broken links

404 errors and broken links detract from your visitor’s user experience and a bad user experience can cause your visitors to lose trust in your company.

Check your website for 404 errors and broken links by installing the plugins below. Some of them allow you to redirect your 404 errors to your homepage or to another page of your choice.

You can also show some personality by creating a custom 404 error page that helps visitors get to what they want easily and lets them know a little more about your company.

Evohosting showcases some custom 404 error pages like this humorous one from Free Association.

freeassociation 404 page

8. Publish a blog and newsletter

Having a blog that is regularly updated and inviting your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter, shows them that you’re the kind of organisation that values your connection with them and sends out regular updates, and not a fly-by-night operator who will up and vanish some day.

See how inbound marketing company, Hubspot, publishes a number of blogs, each targeted at a different buyer persona, and offers separate subscriptions to each of them.

Hubspot Blogs

9. Have a privacy policy statement

This is a must-do to make your website trustworthy. If you’re collection private information, such as emails, from your website visitors, you need to let them know how their information will be used.

Create a page with your terms of service and privacy policy, clearly stating that their emails will not be sold or distributed to anyone else and will only be used to send them the updates they asked for.

The WPeka’s WP LegalPages WordPress Plugin allows you to create a TOS and Privacy Policy and 15 other important pages automatically, just by filling in a short form.

10. Showcase testimonials from customers

Testimonials tell your visitors that your business has happy customers who are willing to recommend your products and services. They are one of the most effective ways to get your visitors to trust your company.

See how Neil Patel showcases his testimonials on his blog.

Neil Patel testimonial

It is easy to showcase your testimonials on your website using one of the plugins here.

11. Showcase social proof of your social media community

Use a WordPress plugin like Social Media Feather to link to your social profiles from your website to give your visitors another way to keep in touch.

Install a Facebook like box that shows how many fans you have. The Jetpack plugin allows you to install a Facebook like box without any hassles.

You can also display an updated count of all your fans and followers as social proof. Hubspot does it in a very creative fashion here.

Hubspot social proof

12. Provide a guarantee and a refund policy

Guarantees and refund policies tell your website visitors that you believe in the products and services you offer and are willing to put your money behind them.

They are a very effective way of getting visitors to pull out their credit card and click on that buy button. Because they know that they can trust your offer, and that ordering from you is risk-free.

Always display refund policy and guarantee on the product page itself. Build their trust on the product and ultimately to make your website trustworthy.

13. Be transparent about your pricing

Being evasive about your prices is not the best way to inspire trust in your visitors. It tells them that you have something to hide – either that your prices are not the same for each customer or that you might add on taxes that you don’t want to disclose.

Being transparent about your prices, or at least stating a ballpark figure, tells your visitors what they can expect to pay you. If you offer custom packages that you cannot offer pricing for, mention clearly what they entail and what you’re willing to include with them.

This is very easy but an important point to make your website trustworthy.

14. Publish case studies of customers

Case studies, like testimonials, tell your visitors what you have managed to achieve for your clients and what you can do for their own businesses. Allow your visitors to download your case studies so they can contact you later if they’re just browsing or shopping for different services.

15. Showcase websites you’ve been featured on

If you have written for or been featured on other prominent publications, some of the authority of the websites you’ve been featured on rubs off on you too, especially in the eyes of your visitors.

Featuring an “As Featured In” section on your website tells your visitor that you’re a credible authority too, and that they can trust in you.

This is one of the easiest thing to make your website trustworthy but you need to be actually on some prominent publications or blog. Don’t just add websites just for the sake of doing it. Sometimes people do check, and if they don’t find it, then you know the answer.

As featured In

16. Don’t post Adsense or other ad banners

Posting ads on a website that you sell other products or services from, tells your visitors that you’re not making enough money from your business. It also shows that you’re desperate to monetize your website in other ways. It’s not a move that inspires trust and confidence.

If your business website sells services or products, don’t place any ads on it, no matter how tempting. Only use it to showcase your own offerings.

17. Use secure ordering and payment options

If you own an ecommerce website or accept any sort of payments from your website, it is highly important to make your website trustworthy. Because if you can’t you are directly losing money.

To build trust on your website, use secure ordering and payment options to let your visitors know that their credit card and other data is not being shared with anyone else.

Nothing makes people less trusting than being asked to enter private data over a non-secure payment gateway. This is one place that it helps to invest in the best options because it involves your customers private information.

Let website visitors know that you can be trusted with their personal information by purchasing a TRUSTed Websites Privacy Certification or a Thawte® Trusted Site Seal. Display your certification prominently on your order pages.

18. Offer chat support

Customers who are placing an order from your website may have certain queries that they need answered immediately.

To boost their trust and ensure that you do not lose orders, use a plugin such as Zopim, WP Live Chat Support or WordPress Live Chat Plugin. These plugins help you provide support and live chat to your customers and in process make your website trustworthy.

19. Answer customer queries and comments promptly

If you allow comments on your website and blog, ensure that you respond to each and every one of the comments promptly.

If your visitors see comments that have not received replies for weeks or months, it’s likely to make them wonder if they can trust you to respond to them too.

Responding promptly tells them that you care about them and are willing to take the time to answer their queries or comments.

20. Keep your website free from hackers

Hackers can plant malicious code using vulnerabilities in plugins or themes that have not been updated for a long time. Make sure you keep your plugins and themes updated and install a plugin like Wordfence Security to keep away hackers and malicious code.

Uninstall or change plugins that have not been updated by their developers for a long time. The plugin page will usually give you an idea of the last time a plugin was updated and a warning if it was not updated for over two years.

I hope you’ve found these tips to make your website trustworthy useful. If you have any tips of your own to share, please do so in the comments below.

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