Don’t judge a book by its cover… Unless it’s your website.
You have a great product or service (make that life-changing product, in your opinion anyway…), so, eventually, customers will come, right?
Unfortunately, research shows what you have to offer means less than how the website offering the product or service appears. So, contrary to the adages we’ve been taught for as long as we can remember - that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, that looks aren’t everything – don’t apply to the web, particularly to gaining enough trust to sell yourself to visitors.
When it comes to your website, perception is everything. And, considering data suggests web surfers evaluate a page in less than one second - you better make a great impression and you better do it quickly.
A Stanford study* involving 4,500 people over three years focused on how users determine the credibility of a website. The research isn’t new, but savvy consumers today are spending less time evaluating a website than ever before.
Based on this research, here are some ideas you can use that still stand true:
Show you’re real – a real organization, with real people, offering real benefits:
- Anyone can have a website. While it’s great that a small company’s website can appear alongside a big corporation’s, this also pairs your legitimate company with less than reliable websites that may not represent a real company at all. A website doesn’t provide any guarantee of an actual building, employees, or business experience. To single yourself out as a credible source, list your physical address prominently and include a picture of your office or feature memberships with local business organizations.
Explain why the real people at your real company should be trusted:
- Provide your credentials for visitors; this information can come in the form of business recognitions or awards, staff bios with experience listed, or testimonials from current clients.
Make it painfully easy for visitors to contact you:
- In addition to signaling that you’re a real company, this tactic will help you get the leads you’re looking for from your site. Give visitors several ways to contact you, so they can choose their preference – physical address, email address, and phone number. If your company is larger, with several contacts, consider giving specific contacts for specific inquiries. Include this information throughout your site, not just in tiny text at the bottom of your pages or on a contact page.
Signal you’re still there - often:
- Be sure to keep your site up to date. If you’re not watching your site, why should anyone else be? Regular updates show your business is active and responsive. And, updates can help your search engine rankings.
And, possibly most important – an unbiased opinion, of course…
Create a captivating, appropriate visual site design:
- One of the main ideas this research found was that people quickly evaluate a site on visual design alone. Layout, content, and images, as well as a design that matches your company’s purpose, were all main factors used to evaluate the credibility of a design.
*Fogg, B.J. (May 2002). “Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility.” A Research Summary from the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab. Stanford University. www.webcredibility.org/guidelines
