If you’re working on your first website, then you have little to no brand recognition in the marketplace. A potential customer views your site and decides if you are legit and if they are okay parting with cash or giving you their personal information in a matter of seconds. This is done using specific signals and not “vague vibes”.
Here are five of the most important website trust signals that we have observed working in small business web development.
Use real testimonials. Saying “great service would recommend” is not a good testimonial. Testimonials need to be specific, include a full name, a photo, and a specific problem that was solved. Avoid vague, unattributed and anonymous testimonials. Visitors can easily tell if a testimonial is made up.
craft a real About us page. This page is one of the most skipped pages on small business websites and for good reason. People do business with people, and a page with real names, photos, and a decent background and team description of the business goes a long way to building a potential customer’s trust. It is able to compensate for any gaps in creativity when it comes to crafting web page content.
Prominent contact details. If a prospect has to search for contact info, they will assume there’s something wrong with your operation when in reality it’s just an oversight on your part. Put contact info on your web page headers or footers, not on pages 3 or 4 deep on some contact info page that no one is likely to visit.
Prove, don’t just say. Prove your value by showing relevant work. You shouldn’t tell prospects how good you are, show them. Some businesses list their proposed services, but fail to show the results of those services. This is a common shortcoming among small business sites.
Activity. A blog stale enough to have last been updated three years ago, or a site that has clearly been abandoned, undermines all of the effort and expense you put into developing your business. You don’t have to update every day, but if a business has some content that shows they are still active, it makes potential customers feel more confident that the business is still actively operating and will respond to its customers.
None of them are complicated or pricey to fix. Most are more about the effort you put in, like having an actual About page, asking happy customers for a specific testimonial instead of a generic one, adding your phone number where people can see it. Together, they can be what makes a visitor reach out to you, instead of going back to Google to try a different option.