Four tips for building a trustworthy website

Details: Thursday, 14 April 2011 20:37; Hits: 383

The entire point of SEO work is so that your website begins to appear naturally on the search engine organic results page. Why? Because independent research by Comcast and Netpoint has shown that searchers tend to trust websites that appear high on the organic search engine page results more than websites which appear on the online ads results column, and therefore click on them and do business with them more. This means that if your website is not also optimized to capitalize on the visitor you get you are missing a real opportunity to make a sale.

So, how do you exactly convert online visitors to online customers? There are four basic tips that will help you:

1. Show your visitors who you are – If you are asking people to send you money in order for a service or product make sure that they know who you are, that they know you are a person and understand what your motivation is and why you have set up this site. For example, in the About Us, page on this site you find out that there are two of us, Jimmy and David, that we are SEO industry experts who make their living out of search engine optimization for corporations and you also find out that the motivation for setting up this site was the fact that we got fed up with the usual bovine manure surrounding SEO.

2. Show your visitors you're different – Unless you happen to sell a product or service no one else has thought before the chances are that you have competitors. Your online visitors should know exactly how you are different from all your competitors. Again, if we take this site as an example, you find out very quickly in our ‘Why Subscribe?’ page that a book would give you information that’s more difficult to absorb and act upon and harder to keep fresh, and an SEO service would cost more. Here you find practical SEO advice that fits your level and you can advance at your own pace and, above all, produce results on your website.

3. Show your awards and testimonials from satisfied customers – Online visitors are very human and like each of us they are swayed by other people’s opinion. Have testimonials and show what your clients thought and you are halfway to overcoming most objections. Because online transactions are basically exchanges of trust and because the human contact element is not there, you have to make sure that there are things you implement on your website for your online visitors to access and feel reassured. Similarly, if you have won awards or comply with some particular industry standard or industry compliance requirement, show it in order to prove that you are a serious business.

4. Show your Terms and Conditions regarding doing business with you – This is an expansion on the engendering trust in an online transaction issue. Make sure your online visitors can easily access T & Cs, guarantees and anything else governing doing business with you.

Plus, of course, make sure you have optimized your website in terms of SEO elements so that it shows up high on the organic search engine results page.