Build Site Trust and Prevent Visitors from Leaving

One of the bedrock elements of good, long-standing relationships is trust. As bloggers, we want to build that ever-so-special connection with our followers. But as we all know it does not come overnight. Far from it. We must painstakingly do our research to put unique perspectives into our writing and videos on solutions to the most pressing issues facing our followers. But is that enough? Even if you had a guest scholar from Oxford University writing a blog for you it would still not achieve its aim if it could not be read or found on your site.

In that vein, I have put forward 5 ways in which you can build site trust up with your visitors.

1) Membership in Site Trust Programs

There are a number of associations with your brand that can work towards improving your overall Site Trust. These associations can be visually represented on your website via badges as described under:

Payments: To put buyers at ease when they are making online payments the display of a safe and secure checkout badge goes a long way. Trust can be further boosted by demonstrating, via a badge again that you take major credit cards and that there is free return shipping. To achieve the gold standard of trust shoppers will really be assured when you have a money-back guarantee badge.

Copyright: With the showcasing of your DMCA badge you will demonstrate that you are no-nonsense when it comes to protecting copyright. DMCA criminalizes the unauthorized dissemination of copyrighted works. Make sure your copyright notice as well is up to date.

Authorized Member: Highlighting membership of reputable associations, local chambers, business bodies, etc. will also go some distance in communicating a trustworthy brand.

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2) 404 Errors

It’s very disappointing sometimes to do a Google search, find information for something you require only to hit the link and receive a 404 error. I find it annoying and it signals to me that the site owner has not done enough to maintain a high customer user experience. When I leave sites like this they have lost my trust.

A 404 error means the server cannot find the page you are looking for. It happens for instance when you delete a site and do not issue a redirect of your old URL to a new URL. The more 404’s the higher your bounce rate and the harder it is for search engines to crawl your site and perform SEO.

It is advisable to find these broken links and cure them. You can use WP’s Broken Link Checker or Screaming Frog

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3) Influencers and Brand Endorsements

Many Influencers have audiences who will hang on to their every word and piece of advice. Great leaders like this often have a Power behind their Word that can form and change millions of opinions about brands. Sports personalities like Ronaldo, Michael Jordan, Hamilton all have great success at this. Oprah for instance has made megastars by endorsing the likes of Barack Obama to Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz, to countless other authors and product innovators.

Visitors to your website are looking to see who your endorsers are which generates a sort of trust by association. Not necessarily at the level of Oprah of course, though that would be brilliant but certainly recognizable personalities and reputable entities - local celebrity, newspaper, magazine, association, etc. Forming a relationship with Influencers therefore could be a very useful key in building up your site trust.

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4) Website Design

With millions of choices at a visitor's fingertips, you have a very short period to make an impression. If your site takes too long to load, is cluttered and hard to navigate, has text that is difficult to read, the structure of the site is poorly laid out making it hard to find what you are looking for and icons are not visible then the user is going to leave your site. Avoid these common issues to improve experience and trust.

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5) ENABLE HTTPS

One of the first indicators that the website owner wants to ensure confidence and trust is in having their website HTTPS secure. As seen above it is shown by a padlock before your URL thus signaling that your website is secure. HTTPS is simply a protocol that allows for secure communication to occur across the net. Regardless of the content on your website, you should always aim to have HTTPS enabled. Failure to do so could cause Google to advise visitors that your site is not secure which is a total thumbs down for trust. To get HTTPS you can go through the sign-up steps with Godaddy or another provider.

I hope you enjoyed this short read. Can you think of other ways we as bloggers could improve our site trust?

Remember to like and I look forward to your interesting comments.

All best to your success,

Hugh