Think of this. What makes you do business or want to do business with a particular company? Among the things you can mention, trust is probably one of them, as is expertise.
In other words, if you have enough reasons to believe that a brand is credible, you won’t really mind doing business with them.
But not many businesses can boast of having an audience that fully trusts them. In fact, Search Engine Watch reports that only a meager 22% of brands have earned the trust of consumers.
Credibility, just like respect, has to be earned. Your potential and existing clients have to know you very well and believe that you will get the job done and stay true to your word.
Your website has to reflect such attributes. “How?”, you may ask. That’s what we are about to look at, with the focus primarily on content.
4 Ways Your Website Content Can Increase Credibility
1. Information About Yourself/Organization, Employees, And Contacts
In order to figure out whether they can develop a trusting relationship with you, many website visitors head straight to the ‘about us’ page. Moz reports that it’s actually one of the most visited sections of a website.
The first step to gaining your audience’s trust, therefore, would be to let them know there’s a real person or people behind the site and/or in your business.
Maximize that opportunity by not only introducing yourself and/or your organization, but also adding images (individuals, events, management team, etc.), credentials, contact information, hobbies, family information, and the like. This will help to humanize your brand, eventually making your organization worthy of trust.
Other pieces of information you may want to consider adding under this section include what you do, your company’s history, and a competitive advantage.
2. Include Website Privacy Policy
With the help of a website, it’s possible to collect specific data and information from visitors. If you are a business or marketer, such information can help you to tailor goods and services or achieve other marketing goals.
Unlike before, it’s now easier and inexpensive to get such information, but the other side of this is that visitors care a lot about how you collect their data, how it is used, and how you intend to keep it safe.
If they feel that you don’t value their safety, that will lead to loss of trust in your website and organization. Other times, visitors won’t read the terms and conditions, but these shouldn’t make you overlook putting the policy in place.
Interestingly, in countries, like Canada and Australia, and states, like California, data privacy laws require all websites to have a privacy policy.
Nevertheless, as a website owner, you have to be aware of the rules and regulations (state, federal, and international) governing what you can and can’t collect and what to do with the gathered information. Remember, the policy varies mostly based on business type and geographical location.
Having such a policy shows what you stand for as a website owner or business.
3. Genuine Customer Feedback
Did you know that about 90% of consumers make their purchasing decision based on online reviews? That shows almost every consumer is skeptical by nature.
Thus, you have to convince them that doing business with you is a good decision. One way to do that is to create social proof through word of mouth marketing or testimonials.
The good word can either be about what you offer or your business and from previous or existing customers. In fact, if you are just starting out and look to building your brand and establishing trustworthiness, testimonials can help to propel you closer to achieving such goals.
Besides, feedback from real people who have interacted with your business or what you offer is exactly what you need to persuade prospects who could be reluctant to try your products and/or services. That’s why it’s important to solicit it from actual customers. Don’t write it or have someone else who is not a client do it because this can mess up your brand’s integrity and authenticity.
If not sure how to get customer feedback, try things like emailing your clients and requesting for testimonials/reviews, enabling reviews on your website, or creating free surveys or polls. Remember to put what you will have gathered back on your website.
You can place the results on a testimonial page, home page, landing page, or product/service page. Show them off as much as you can.
What’s more, in addition to adding credibility, you can use such information to identify areas that need improvement and get ideas on how to create new products or services.
4. Give Accurate, Verifiable, And Up-To-Date Content
One way to make your audience have confidence in what you share is to add evidence in places where such an addition would be necessary. It could be a list of your sources or links to the source material where there’s external content.
It doesn’t matter whether or not your audience will check out the sources or follow the link. What’s sure is that their presence matters since it’s what will get your audience to trust your content.
Another thing to note is that the web hardly forgets. If what you published a few years ago is no longer of value to your audience, you can either get rid of it, update it, or put it on an archive page for the sake of those still interested in it.
Such an action demonstrates that you really care about what your audience consumes and they are likely to see you as a trustworthy source.
Final Word
As you are well aware, on the web, people mostly use search engines to look up information, a process that exposes them to numerous websites. Obviously, there is plenty of websites probably doing the same thing you are engaged in and what separates the best from the rest is trust and credibility.
It doesn’t matter whether you are just running a blog, promoting a product/service or doing e-commerce. If you can’t prove to your visitors that they can trust you, chances are high they will simply walk away. That’s why you have to take into consideration pieces of content that can increase your website’s credibility, which is exactly what we’ve looked at.
On top of increasing credibility, they can help you generate more leads, boost your sales, and achieve other essential business goals.
Author Bio: Sabine Ghali is Director at Buttonwood Property Management, a property management company in Toronto. She is an entrepreneur at heart who endeavors to help investors create real estate wealth over time in the Greater Toronto Area. Sabine is published in a number of media outlets, including Toronto Sun and Gulf News, among many others.
