Digital Trust Review!
With the advancement in technology, we are online more than ever. From learning to working to shopping to literally everything has shifted online. With so much exposure to the web, digital trust becomes an essential part of a company’s digital strategy. If people don’t trust your brand and what you stand for, they are not going to buy from and interact with you. There are various factors that help build trust with the people in the online world and we are going to talk about those factors in this article.
Pyramid of Trust:
The pyramid of trust is a great way to understand how people trust and when is the right time to ask for a conversion in the relationship that we build with our customers.
When the customers visit your website for the first time, there is no trust established. It is the time when they found you out and have no commitment towards you.
It is when they start exploring your website that they figure out whether they should be exploring it further, whether it aligns with their interests and serves their purpose. Once their initial needs are met, then they go further in the pyramid.
It is then they become further interested in your website, they start comparing it with other options they might have. If at this point your website stands out in the crowd, their trust levels increase. This could be achieved by adding some relatable and trustworthy pieces of information, like testimonials, trustworthy badges, etc.
It is now a good idea to maybe ask them for their personal details, maybe their email address or their social media login. If you, do it right at the beginning, when you have no trust established, it leads to drops off in the conversion rates. It’s just like asking the girl her number when you are meeting for the first time, and you haven’t even had one proper conversation. You wouldn’t do that, right? Then don’t do it on your website as well. Build trust first and then ask for the information that you’d want them to give.
Robert Cialdini’s rule of reciprocity works very well here. Give people first before you ask them to do anything for you. Have some relevant resources that you can give them for free or maybe let them explore your website for some time before you ask for their social media login or any other form of information. The better experience you build for them, the more they are going to trust you.
Always Remember: High Trust comes from experience. This means, you’re going to trust Amazon every time over other e-commerce platforms probably because you’ve shopped from Amazon more than any other website, and over 90% of the time you had an amazing and secure experience.
BJ Fogg’s Credibility Factors:
1.?????Appropriate Design: This means if you are making an e-commerce store, don’t make it look like a design agency website and vice versa. People have some expectations when they look for a category of website, try to meet those expectations when it comes to web design.
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2.?????Easy Verification: Make it very easy for people to verify the claims you are making. Maybe add the links to the research you have done and let them explore that. This adds to building credibility and trust.
3.?????Show you are real: Having founder’s story on your about us page, street address and social media links add to you being more trustworthy as people can see that you are real and not just a website on the internet.
4.?????Prove Expertise: Show that you are an expert at what you do with the help of certification badges, reviews and testimonials from well-known people and other things that prove your expertise.
5.?????Real (Trustworthy) Humans: Make the entire web experience more humane, maybe by adding a picture of the team working behind the brand, their thoughts and inspirations behind working on the brand.
6.?????Easy to contact: Don’t create friction for people to contact you easily. If they don’t find your contact information, that drops your credibility immediately. You can also have a live chat option, that allows people to get their queries answered immediately.
7.?????Easy to use: This comes under cognitive fluency. If your web experience is difficult to go through and people find it ridiculously hard to navigate, then it’s not very credible. They’d want to not use your website at all. So, make it as easy and intuitive for them to use.
8.?????Update often: Make sure you don’t have a website that was last updated 2 years ago. Update the frequent updates, this makes sure that people know your website is active and people actually work behind the brand now. Adds so much to the credibility. \
9.?????Limit Promotions/Ads: Let’s face it. The more ads you have on your website, the lower the credibility you have, as it’s very distracting for people to navigate and focus on the core content of your website. So, lower and if possible, restrict the usage of ads on your website.
10.?Avoid all Errors: If there is some sort of an error, be it grammatical, design or any other error, it doesn’t speak well to the people, and they’d not want to trust you. So make sure you remove all sorts of errors.
These are some of the metrics that BJ Fogg suggests can improve the trust factor of your website. Besides these reviews and testimonial are a great way to gain trust and credibility. Having detailed and honest reviews about your service/product allows people to believe in your brand. Some other factors that add to the trust levels of people are:
-???????Domain Name: Your domain name says a lot about the trust levels. If you have .com extension, people have natural high trust levels associated to it. If you are a shoe company and your domain is shoes.com, then people have an inherent bias that you certainly know something about shoes.
-???????Adding Photos, Videos and Animations: Adding people’s photos, videos or GIFs of using your service/product helps people to gain more trust in your brand.
If you followed this article, you definitely know a lot about building trust online and why it’s so crucial to build it before asking people to make a transaction. As they say, give before you take. So build that trust before you use it. This article is a part of the CXL mini-degree and summarises how we can build trust in online setting. If you found this helpful, do share it with your friends/colleagues.?