Should Webmasters Be Concerned With Credibility?

Webmasters spend a great deal of time focus on factors to make their web sites search engine friendly, profitable, attractive and inviting to their visitors. Sometimes during this process the visitor becomes impersonalized and webmasters lose sight of the importance of building trust with their audience. The fact is that no matter how carefully you designed a web site, without the “personal touch” your visitors may not respond to your offer as well as they could.

That “personal touch” comes from many different factors and if you want to make money with your website you must put emphasis on the features that will help you provide your visitors with a clear picture of who you are, where you are and why they should trust you. Credibility plays a major role in converting visitors to buyers.

In terms of website design there are several things you can do to create a sense of accountability in your web site. Thinking from a website visitor’s perspective, here are some ways to instill trust and buyer confidence online:

1. It should be easy to verify the accuracy of information on your website

2. Create a web site that is easy to use and informative to the visitors needs

3. Provide disclosure on how you will use visitors personal information

4. Demonstrate that there is a real organization behind the website

5. Encourage visitor interaction with complete contact information

6. Request permission from previous clients or customers to publish their testimonials

7. Provide new information on your product or service on regular schedule

8. Clearly explain the ordering, return and refund process

9. Keep commercial advertising images to a minimum

Each one of these points can be demonstrated in design throughout your web site. Verifying information on your website can be accomplished with hyperlinks to external sources. Using problem solutions for customers as the basis for the content of your web site requires more than simply telling them what you have to offer and how much it costs. People use the Internet to find information; about products and services, but more importantly how to use them to solve their problems.

Instead of focusing on how great your product or service may be from local marketing perspective, the information you provide should demonstrate how the benefits of the product or service will make your visitors life easier, richer, more empowering, make them feel better or save them time. In terms of your company, client or customer references in the form of testimonials can provide visitors with an endorsement that works better for your product or service than advertising copy alone.

In addition, many webmasters focus most of their attention on optimizing their web pages for the search engines. However it is more important to optimize your web pages for humans in terms of giving them a clearly defined architecture of benefits and information which leads to a call for action.

Instilling buyer confidence in your web site visitors depends on how secure they feel from the information provided, and simply having a secure socket layer certificate (SSL) and padlock icon on your order page is not enough. After product and service information, your company contact information is absolutely essential. An e-mail and physical address, telephone number plus background information about the company gives your visitors a sense of accountability.

The time you invest in building credibility factors into your website and providing excellent customer service will pay dividends in customer referrals. Assuring your visitors that their personal information is secure, addressing their problems and their needs, providing open channels of communication and responding to their request in a timely manner will encourage your customers to recommend your product or service to their friends and family. The search engines can only direct visitors to your website, the webmasters job is to convince the visitor that they have from what they wanted.