How To Gain Digital Trust (Tips & Tricks To Boost Your Website's Credibility)

Trust is the cornerstone for any business success. No matter how beautiful your website design is and how compelling your call to action is, your user will bounce right off before any engagement if your website isn't trustworthy.

Trust is a deal-breaking criterion for all sort of business relationship-building process. Especially in the B2B sector, where the customer's journey involves several months of careful deliberation.

In B2B, buyers need to be open to engage with you before making the final purchase decision. But people don't easily trust when it comes to marketing and sales because there have been too many cases of manipulative tactics over the generations. In fact, according to a HubSpot study, only 3% of people trust salespeople and marketers. 

To overcome this, websites should meet users' basic trust needs before asking them for information or any engagement. Luckily, there are many ways to increase trustworthiness on your website. In this CXL blog, I will discuss what you should do or avoid to build and maintain trust between you and your customers via your site.

The Trust Pyramid

Web designers' ultimate goal is to minimize friction during the whole customer's journey and collect user information as soon as possible. But websites must meet customer's trust needs first. For this, designers should view the whole experience from the customer's perspective.

One way to do this is to imagine yourself asking a stranger on the road for big favors. Think about the steps you would go through to overcome initial skepticism and build trust before asking for contact information or money? If you skip those steps, the person would walk away or, on the web, leave the website and try somewhere else.

The Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) developed a Pyramid Of Trust, inspired by Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This pyramid highlights the basic trust needs that need to be met before progressing a relationship between a site and a user.

They state: "Establishing trust is a gradual process. The relationship between a user and website progresses through different commitment phases, each built on top of the former ones. Higher levels of commitment cannot be attained before the lower ones".

5 Stages of Trust

According to the Pyramid of Trust, the relationship between a site and a user progresses through the 5 levels of commitment. It starts from the bottom, and each higher level requires all lower levels to be satisfied first.

When a new visitor lands on your website, he/she starts standing in the sand, which is labeled as "no trust established yet" in the chart above. They'll remain there unless you encourage them to climb.

People have different needs at each level of commitment. Once these needs are met sufficiently, users will be more likely to trust your site, fulfill your demands, and progress to the next level. Let's look at these levels along with the needs of the visitor at each level.

Level 1. Baseline Relevance and Trust That Needs Can Be Met

Could this site help me accomplish my goal? Is it credible, and can I depend on this information? Does it seem to have my best interests at heart?

Level 2. Interest and Preference Over Other Options

Do I choose to use this site for this task? Is it better than other options?

Level 3. Trust with Personal Information

Is this site's offering valuable enough to justify the time and effort to register? Do I trust the site with my personal information?

Level 4. Trust with Sensitive/Financial Information

Do I trust this site to use and store my sensitive data securely? Is it worth the risk?

Level 5. Willingness to Commit to An Ongoing Relationship

Am I comfortable enough to establish a continuous connection with this site?

What Should You Do and Avoid to Build Trust On Your Website?

• Match your ask to the trust level of your users. 
• Don't make demands at higher levels of commitment until you've addressed all the trust needs at the lower levels. 
• Ask yourself if the information you are asking for is necessary at the initial stage of interaction?
• Allow your users to browse through your website content long enough to build trust before asking for sensitive information.
• Allow guest checkout or PayPal on your site.

Remember, high trust comes with experience, and experience comes with time.

Several Ways to Earn Digital Trust

To build digital trust and progress a user towards the conversion, you must address users' trust needs and reduce friction at each stage with trust cues. Here are some ways you can earn digital trust on your site.

Use High Quality and Authentic Images

Cheesy and generic stock photos are everywhere. It is okay to use carefully selected stock images; however, it is wise to use imagery that looks like you or your team in real situations.

Using low-quality visuals can lower your site's perception as a trustworthy source almost instantly. At the same time, high-quality images are directly proportional to high-quality products and services.

Some excellent free resources for getting highly curated images for your site are Pexels, Unsplash, or Pixabey.  With the multitude of online image editing programs available, such as Canva, Stencil, or Fotor, creating high-quality visuals is attainable most of the time at virtually no cost.

Ensure Your Website Is HTTPS Secure

The very first impression that a site has to earn trust is in its URL. No matter how wonderful your content is, if your website isn't secure, users won't trust you. Most hosting providers offer Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) websites; however, some still fall short at this very first step.

This security sign of the website comes in the form of an HTTPS rather than an HTTP URL. It can be seen easily by a padlock icon to the left of the URL. If your website doesn't have it, go for it as 50% of the web is now encrypted with HTTPS sites.

Keep You Web Copy To The Point

Using complex and jargon-filled copy is, sometimes, unavoidable given the very nature of the industry. However, it is best to avoid cliché and complex words in your web copy. If a simpler word or sentence works just as well as a complex one, consider using it.

It is always worth keeping things simple, so your global audiences can understand you at all times. See below how Shopify uses clear and to-the-point web copy. 

Provide Social Proof

Social proof plays the strongest role in gaining trust, especially from a B2B perspective. You can use and promote customer-generated content on your website to gain trust via social proof. Ask your clients to provide feedback every time you complete a project to display on your website.

If possible, use authentic photos of the person along with the testimonial. Here's an example of a visually compelling testimonial from HubSpot, the inbound marketing, sales, and customer service provider. 

Provide Social Proof Via Media Badges, Clients & Partners Logos and Certifications

I have already discussed the importance of social proof in web design in my previous blogs. If you and your business has been mentioned in any reputable media source, show it off.

You probably have seen many B2B websites showcasing "As Seen On" montages of publishing logos. They boost your customers' confidence in your website at the very first glance. If you are getting any decent media mentions, ensure your website visitors know about it.

You can also boost your website's trustworthiness by showcasing logos of the clients you've worked with or are your partners. People will recognize the big brand names; however, unknowns and not-so-famous names can make a positive impression.

See how Freshdesk, a customer support software provider, uses client logos to boost digital trust. 

Displaying earned certifications, accreditations, and awards can also help you earn your customers' trust or users. HubSpot offers its awards at the end of its homepage.

Another way to build a trustworthy website is letting your visitors know that your website uses secure payment gateways, especially for e-Commerce and SaaS websites.

For example, Bodybuilding, a nutritional supplement retailer, shows these security badges on its checkout page.

Final Say

Trust can be an organization's most precious asset. Once earned, it results in more traffic, higher pages-per-session, lower bounce rate, more subscribers, more conversions, and more leads.

So, build your website with these tips in mind, and you'll have more chances of building customer trust. By boosting your company's credibility, your customers or site visitors will feel safe engaging with you or sharing their personal information with you.

How do you prove your sites’ trustworthiness? Let me know your tips and tricks in the comments below.