10 signs of a trustworthy site

This is an adaptive translation of the article. The original is available at the link: " 10 Signs of a Trustworthy Website ".

There are millions of sites on the Internet. The reliability of some of them is beyond doubt: for example, if we are talking about Macy's online store or the BBC news portal. But how many times in search of a specific product or service have you come across companies that you have never heard of before? And how many times have you thought: is it safe to deal with them?
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It can be argued that in most cases you made a decision, relying solely on the company’s website as such. You did not call friends or read reviews on sites like Yelp (although this can be very useful). In the end, after viewing the site, you either closed it in search of another resource, or made a decision to purchase a product or order a service - right? I did it myself more than once.

Why? What are we guided by?

Here we will not talk about usability, ease of access (accessibility), page load times, calls for action and many other very important details that nevertheless become secondary when the main thing is neglected - the fact that The site should call Trust.

Being an active Internet user and at the same time a professional working directly in the field of web development, I realized that I was paying attention to a number of signs that either inspire confidence in the company or suggest searching for another resource.

What are these signs? Below is information that will be useful to both users and site owners.

1. Components of social networks : I mean widgets like Facebook components: with photos of people who liked a particular site. If you are logged in to Facebook and opened the site that hosts the Facebook widget, then you will see the names and photos of your friends who like this site. This will be one of the most significant arguments in favor of the resource of a particular company.

2. Address : agree, you feel a little more confident when the physical address of the company is indicated in the footer or on the contact page. Certainly, there are eCommerce stores without actual location - goods are delivered directly from warehouses. However, in most cases, specifying an address creates a significant advantage. Please note that the address of the subscriber box does not look as good as the physical one.

3. Telephone : if there is no telephone at all on the website, most likely the user will leave it almost immediately. At the very least, provide a mobile number in case you are a small business owner, although a landline telephone is a necessity for almost everyone. The best option is to have multiple phones, a fax, and possibly 800 numbers in addition to the physical address. Instant messaging systems (Skype, ICQ, MSN) are good for communication, but they are not enough to gain confidence. The phone will cope with this task much better.

4. The absence of spelling errors : in the ideal case - the complete absence of grammatical errors. But sometimes on the websites of international companies are placed texts, the authors of which are not native speakers, and in this case, you can close your eyes to the incorrect conjugation of the verb, incorrectly placed comma, etc. Of course, on the websites of well-known companies, mistakes in words will play virtually no role, since the brand will “outweigh” any minor errors in the texts. But if you form an opinion on the website of a small company, the fact of errors will play an important role. And if the site says "our campaign is an excellent supplier of services," I will close it immediately. Dear site owners, especially those who use ready-made CMS: be careful when adding pages or editing text, because very often there is no spell checker in editors such as WYSIWYG. It is easy to make a mistake, which in the future may entail the loss of potential customers.

5. The site should look updated : a clear demonstration that your business is active is very important to customers. Do not make users doubt whether it is safe to place an order online or it is worth to be safe and call the office to find out if you are working at all or not (by the way, your phone is posted on the site, isn't it?). There are three very simple ways to achieve this:

• The current year in the copyright block : yes, theoretically, you can write “1995” to emphasize the date of foundation of the company. But do not do this - people want to see the current year. As a last resort, indicate the years in the format “1995-2012” and do not forget to update the last digit. You can not update the year until the end of the New Year holidays, but even this is not desirable. Do you think this work is too painstaking? Then add a simple Java script to the page that will always show the current year.
• Updated news about the company : add to the home page a few news with the dates of their publication. Keep in mind that general industry news that can be imported from news portals will not work - it must be news specifically about your company. And do not worry if they will be a bit. The challenge is to show customers that your company is working.
• Social media activity : this requires some work, but if a company posts a new message on Twitter every day, updates the wall on Facebook and even responds to comments, you can be absolutely sure that it is alive and, moreover, it pays attention to its customers.

6. Design : today even older people perfectly distinguish sloppy, amateurish design from professional design, and obviously in whose favor their choice will be made. This is the case when they meet on clothes. Recommendation to site owners on how their resource should look like: if you are not a professional designer, go to a web studio and do not insist on your ideas like: “put this yellow text on a blue background”, even if you personally think it will be look great Leave creative to professionals.

Raisins

Audi or BMW, iPhone or Android? There are many similar products on the market. Similarly, on the Web, you are faced with a large number of almost identical sites. What is the very "highlight" that will force you to make a choice in favor of a company?

7. High quality photos: use real photos, not other people's clipart. Users always mark high-quality photos of the office, employees, maybe even customers. In the case of using this technique to achieve a good impression of the company becomes much easier. If you can not post good photos, better not lay out anything.

8. Certificates and partnerships : you don't have to partner with exceptionally large companies like Chamber of Commerce or Microsoft. This may be a local organization or club of entrepreneurs. In fact, almost any mention of a partnership makes a positive contribution, because it means that business owners actively interact with other representatives of this or that industry.

9. Security certificate: SSL certificate on the payment page or a VeriSign sign on the contacts page can be a decisive argument when comparing two almost identical sites.

10. Good positions in search engines : for the average user, this is not obvious, but if you work in the web industry, you can easily see if business owners care about their site by checking the resource positions in search engines. I will not focus on how you can check the position of the site, just explain your point: imagine that you are looking for a “business cards printing company” in Google. You see hundreds of sites in search results. Those resources that you see at the very top, in the AdWords section and those that occupy the first positions in the issue, belong to people who constantly invest in their sites, therefore, they take care of their online representation.

I hope this article will help users when choosing good companies. And business owners can understand what changes to make to the site in order to gain such valuable trust of the target audience.

Author: Alex Lanin, Marketing Director at Zfort Group.