6 Ways to Earn the Trust of Your Website Audience

In the online world gaining the trust of your audience starts with your website. Your website is your online portfolio and the very first place where your audience gets to know about you or gets in touch with you. A glance at the website makes them decide whether they would like to associate with your company or not.

A professional and well-optimized website underscores your credibility in the highly competitive world wide web. So, this blog shares 6 web design strategies to gain your audience’s trust.

1. Invest in a professional website design

To gain your audience’s trust you need a professional yet visually appealing website design that helps you gain your audience’s trust.

Here are some statistics uncovered:

• 94% of people stated web design as the major reason for trusting or rejecting a website. (source Ironpaper.com)
• Further, 48% of people stated that a website’s design is the number one factor when it comes to deciding the credibility of a business. (Source Ironpaper.com)

So based on the above facts it won’t be much to say that you can’t gain brand loyalty if your website design turns people off. Thus, a compelling website with a clean navigation and relevant content can certainly increase your chances of conversions.

When we talk about website design, having a responsive website is essential as more and more people are using mobile devices to access the internet. As per eMarketer more than 8 in 10 users are accessing the internet through their mobile device. Keeping this no. in mind, you need a responsive website to give your users a good web experience.

Thus, design matters and having a well-designed website is the first step towards building credibility and finally gaining the loyalty of your audience.

2. Focus on content marketing

62% of millennials responded that online content drives trust and loyalty to a brand. (Source insights.newscred.com)

Credibility and competence are two important elements when it comes to building trust and gaining the loyalty of your audience. Your website is your calling card and allows you to share details about your company in the most effective way.

Make sure, you thoroughly share information about your company, your products, services and what sets you apart from your competition.

Create content in the form of blog posts, articles, infographics that is of high value to your audience so that they remain engaged with your brand for the longest time.

Users are more likely to come back to your brand if you provide them with relevant and engaging content pieces consistently. The aim of the content should not be only to educate them but play a significant role in solving their problems.

When consumers will feel rewarded for visiting your website they will certainly come back again. Through continuous content marketing efforts, you can build trust and also foster loyalty. There are so many brands who have used content marketing to foster loyalty.

For Instance- HubSpot (The inbound sales and marketing platform) is an excellent example of this. The company creates online content for marketers daily. Their blog covers a broad range of marketing and sales topics that are of great value to marketers.

They use a variety of content in the form of eBooks, guides, videos, and templates to keep the audience engaged. HubSpot smartly uses a mix of magnet and gated content to procure leads and at present enjoys over 2 million monthly visitors.

3. Leverage the power of social media

Whether you are running a b2b website or an e-commerce portal, an active social media presence helps in gaining visibility and building trust among your audience.

Users before making any purchase decision, always make it a point to check the company’s social media channels attached to their website. To promote your online brand is it important that your social media and website works seamlessly together.

The kind of content you share on your social channels, no. of followers you enjoy, an overall graphic design of your page and posts you share, and the engagement you have on your social page plays a significant role in building brand image and trust. Your social page adds up to the trust you have already build from the other key activities.

Linking your website to your social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, is an effective website design practice. Social media integration on your website, shows transparency, reflects your brand’s voice, and simply provides visitors an opportunity to trust you more.

For Example- Neon & Co. has strategically integrated their Instagram feed into their website. This allows their visitors to access and view their social media profile more easily.

4. Reviews and testimonials

Reviews and Testimonials play a vital role when it comes to gaining credibility among your target audience.

Take a glance at some fast facts:

• 72% of consumers stated that they can trust a business more when they find positive reviews about it.
• 88% of consumers stated that they trust online reviews no less than personal recommendations. (Source searchengineland.com)
• As per statistics by Infinity, 63% of consumers prefer purchasing from a site that offers customer reviews.

Thus, 7 out of 10 consumers feel positive reviews inspire trust. People greatly depend upon online reviews or social proofs when it comes to choosing a product/service. People find your business reliable, if they get to know that your products or services are used by a great no. of people.

If you have reviews from influencers or some known personality who have an established reputation within the niche industry, it helps you in gaining immediate credibility. Adding a review page on your site that showcases all testimonials of your clients at a single web page is a great way to build trust.

Further video testimonials are replacing the plain text testimonials as they are harder to fake and adds a feeling of authenticity. Video clips of your happy clients appear more powerful than audio or text reviews.

Booker is a good example of how to effectively use Testimonials on the website.

Displaying reviews from your social profiles to your website is also an effective way of gaining audience trust, importing reviews from your yelp page is also a great idea. A little bragging sometimes pays off, so if your customers are saying good things about you, sharing them on your website is highly recommended.

5. Display awards and certifications

Showcasing your awards, achievements, certifications, and credentials on the website is a proven way to inspire trust among the visitors. It is considered impressive as it shows your great work and competency.

Website footer is the best place to showcase these awards, certifications, security shields, authorized badges and is a proven way to add credibility to every page of your website.

Certifications come with logos and the awards you win also has a logo, so the ideal way is putting all these logos together in the website footer. The purpose of putting them in the website footer is, they are highly visible.

As per a study by Chartbeat, they analyzed 25 million websites, and found visitors scroll down thousands of pixels to check the footer. Thus, adding your credentials in the footer surely has a positive impact on your site’s credibility.

6. Use of statistics and case studies

In order to build trust, you need to demonstrate your competency by showing real numbers and case studies.

Creating a case study is a brilliant way to give concrete examples of your work and its results. It also helps your potential customers to understand better how your products and services can be utilized.

Metrics don’t lie! Showing quantifying results, and presenting real numbers shows that you are a core professional company and serious about producing outcomes.

HubSpot is a great example of how to showcase studies effectively on your website. The page features thumbnails featuring their client logos and main outcome that they gained from Hubspot’s service. Moreover, these case studies can be filtered based on company size, industry, location etc. This encourages the users to continue exploring.

Conclusion

The combination of a compelling website design and relevant content helps companies in gaining trust and ultimately building a loyal customer base. Follow the listed web design strategies and trust will certainly follow. Good luck!