Building trust online is essential if your web marketing efforts are going to pay off. Attracting visitors is great, but to convert them to customers you must establish credibility before you can gain their trust.
According to a study by Stanford University, almost half of web users assess a site’s credibility based on the appeal of the overall design, including layout, typography, and color scheme. The “look and feel” is the first and most important test of your site’s credibility. But if they decide to stick around beyond a couple seconds, more factors come into play.
Take the quiz below to determine if your website is building (or undermining) your credibility. Score each question 1 (nope), 2 (so-so) or 3 (yes, very much). Add up the total, then see our recommendations at the end.
- Is the visual design appropriate for your type of business?
Within a few seconds of coming to your site, visitors will form an impression. People respond positively to sites with a polished, professional look. But the connection between design and credibility isn’t simple. In the study, overly “slick-looking” sites frequently received negative comments. - Is the content up-to-date?
Visitors assign more credibility to sites that have been recently updated or reviewed (and no, just putting the current date and time isn’t going to help). - Is contact information easy to find?
If visitors can’t find your contact info (including your real-world address and a phone number) they aren’t going to feel comfortable doing business with you. - Are all the links working?
Broken links and “files not found” on your site present a big credibility problem. Even worse– hosting that’s not reliable. If your hosting company doesn’t guarantee 99.9% uptime, find another host. - Do you include testimonials or other 3rd party endorsements.
You can and should highlight your expertise. But no matter how impressive your credentials or experience, people pay attention to what others have to say about you. Membership in the Chamber of Commerce, BBB, local organizations and professional associations also help build trust. - Do you provide photos of yourself and key staff?
People do business with people. Help your prospects get to know you. Good quality photos (please– no mug shots or high school year book photos) communicate your level of professionalism. Stock photos of happy smiling models posing as business people never fool anybody. - Is your copy appropriate to your audience?
Always remember that your website is about your visitors. Your web copy should set the right tone and offer useful information. Kill the jargon and happy talk. Eliminate the typos. And don’t stuff it with keywords in a futile attempt to trick the Search Engines. - Do you offer free trials or downloads?
What about case-studies, white papers, or samples? When you give something to visitors, regardless of the cost, they’re more likely to trust you.
Recommendations
Score less than 12
Your site is undermining the credibility of your company. Get help– immediately!
Score 12 to 18
Your site is doing OK, but it’s not converting as many visitors as it could. Identify areas that are weak and make improvements.
Score greater than 18
Your website is helping to build trust in your company. Consider ways to increase your credibility even further and be sure to measure your success. Set up and track your conversion goals in Google Analytics.
The Biggest Problem on the Web (Again)
June 29, 2010
There’s nothing new in this post, but some messages need repeating… and repeating.
I recently came across the outspoken media blog which shocked me into consciousness. Instead of the usual marketing drivel, these folks really are outspoken! They say what they think and take a stand, even if it ruffles some feathers.
Thanks to content management tools it’s easy to write for your blog or website. You don’t have to know how to spell, and grammar, what’s that? Hey, you can always “borrow” some copy from another site (but that’s a different blog post).
In every tool there’s the potential for good or evil. There’s a difference between adding effective, engaging, inspiring content and adding meaningless word combinations to a page nobody will ever read.
What makes effective content?
Take this simple test. Read the copy on your web page. Out loud. If you can get through it without getting confused (what is this about?) or bored (oh brother!) you’re on the right track.
The biggest problem on the web
Too many words. It’s not that people aren’t willing to read online. It’s that we don’t want to waste time reading boring, irrelevant nonsense, or being forced to read (rather than scan) to find what we’re looking for.
Some tips for effective web copywriting
- Write less
- Write from your visitor’s point of view (what do they need to/want to know?)
- Focus on the benefits of your product or service
- Use short sentences, brief paragraphs
- Make it easy to scan with sub-headers, lists, and bold text for emphasis
- Use “you” and “your” rather than “we”
- Include a “call-to-action” that tells visitors what you’d like them to do
That’s not going to solve the biggest problem on the web, but it’s a start. What tips do you have?
When your site comes up in Google’s search results you’ll see a snippet or short text preview displayed below the link. It will either be something Google grabs from your site, or words you control by creating a “meta description.”
The quality of your meta descriptions can have a direct impact on the number of people who click through to your site. That’s why it’s worth taking the time to create them.
Relevant snippets accurately represent your web pages and provide a clear idea of their content. You should have a different meta description for every page on your site. If you have a large site you’ll need to prioritize this task by addressing the most important pages first.
Meta descriptions can– but don’t have to be– in sentence format. Here’s an example of a succinct and informative meta description.
Here’s a really bad snippet. It is uninformative, difficult to read, and even has a typo!
Tips for writing a good meta description
- Avoid duplicating information already in the page title
- Make sure it accurately describes the page content
- Make it clear and easy to read
- Don’t exceed 160 characters (or it will get truncated in the Search results)
- Think of it as the first step in the visitor experience of your site
While accurate meta descriptions can improve click-through rates, they do not affect your ranking within the search results.
What I learned from my kid’s preschool website
March 17, 2010
My kid goes to a really great school. I love it, and he loves it. It’s exactly the right place for a 4-year-old: the kids and the teachers work as a team to decide on activities, it’s fun, diversity is celebrated, the teachers are genuine and enthusiastic. It’s just great.
The school’s website, on the other hand, is not great. There’s too much text and not enough pictures. I’m fairly sure a lot of the information on it is out of date, but the site’s so uninspiring that I’m not compelled to actually read any of it to find out. It doesn’t communicate to any particular audience effectively – parents, educators, donors. There doesn’t seem to be much reason for its existence.
There is one part of the site that I visit every day. Religiously.
And that’s the private forum for parents. It’s a window into the school-world of my son that I would otherwise have no access to. Every day the teachers post stories and photos of the day’s activities, and every day, like all the other parents, I come back to see what our kids have been up to.
I’m positive that the private forum is the part of the school’s online presence that gets the most traffic. By far. From the school’s perspective, that’s not necessarily a good thing. They went to the effort of building an entire website, and it mostly fails as a communication tool, except for one part, which is not publicly accessible. But for me, that’s irrelevant. I’m a single user, and I get a lot of value out of that one part of the site. For me, it works, because that one part of the site is relevant.
A website should be relevant to the single user.
That’s the point. A website should not address a large audience, it should address a single person. This is almost universally true, and definitely true for this school’s site.
SFGate Experiments with Branding (and Fails)
March 16, 2010
When the sfgate.com (website of the San Francisco Chronicle) home page loaded I thought I must have entered the wrong URL. It was obviously a travel site with a whole lot of text on it. Was that an advertisement on the top right for SFGate?
Nope.
A good proportion of their home page was given over to a Hawaii promotion, and I found it visually arresting. It made me think about a Hawaii vacation (and a Twitter background).
Problem is, this isn’t a travel agency site, it’s a news site. These are tough times and this approach smacks of desperation. Like those cable TV channels with their logos that consume the bottom right corner– and then rotating ads on top of it, all while you’re trying to watch a movie. It seems so insulting and disrespectful (I always wonder what the filmmakers think). Your movie is nothing more than a place for us to hang our logo.
This SFGate home page feels the same. All that news stuff, it’s really gets in the way of the advertisement. I applaud them for the experiment. I hope they don’t repeat it.
Harelips and Haute Couture: NYTimes Brings You the World
March 8, 2010
Style and substance collide in an unfortunate combination of high fashion, birth defects and rotating ads.
I’ve never been accused of being a fashion plate but the other day visiting the nytimes.com homepage I was inspired to click on photos from the Paris 2010 Fall Collections.
I was shocked by what I saw. It wasn’t just the emaciated stick figure wearing what looked to my cretinous eye like thrift shop finds. It was the advertisement showing a young boy with a cleft palette.
The sad pair of big brown eyes stare out from the right side of the page in silent protest. A click of a mouse can save his life, but the cost of the handbag alone would pay for his corrective surgery. Yet it’s the model whose life force seems precarious if she doesn’t eat something soon.
This bizarre juxtaposition of images and the resulting mixed messages would never happen in the print publication. Unless The Times is suggesting that cleft palette is a fashion trend maybe somebody (other than me) needs to start paying attention to the rotating ads.
How To Annoy Your Customers (II)
March 1, 2010
This is a classic example of what NOT to do to potential customers who visit your website.
I found White Flower Farm’s site when I did a Search for “Bulb Garden gifts.” Their page showed 7 different options, one of which was clearly labeled “Sold Out.” So I selected “Here Comes the Sun” which is “New!” Surely that’s available…
Nope. Clearly I was too late. “Sorry, this product is sold out.”
Sorry? Why didn’t they tell me that before I clicked on it?
We suggest the following item(s):
Nothing. NO suggestions.
But I don’t give up so easily. I try “Roses of Winter.”
Sold Out.
I click on “Ice Blue Elegance.”
Sold Out.
They’re obviously doing OK because everything seems to be sold out. But this is a terrible online experience (and the more I look at their site the worse it gets). These usability problems undermine the strong White Flower Farm brand. They could be easily fixed if somebody was paying attention to the customer experience.
But things get worse. I return to my Search results and click on an ad for Burpee.com. They paid for the click, which brought me to a “File not found” page.
Granted, it’s a fairly nice file not found page, but still, this is hardly a good experience.
Only Google benefits from it.
Usability: One Word Can Make a Difference
January 18, 2010
I needed to login to my Comcast account to update my credit card info. They have a simple sign-in page with a text box to enter your user name. Under the box it says: “Your user name is your e-mail address.” That’s helpful since I didn’t have a clue what my user name is.
Type in my email address. Can’t miss the error message: “Missing or Invalid Information.” OK, I try my gmail address. Same result. I try my hotmail address. Same thing.
Now I’ve run out of options and have to find a phone number (pretty well hidden under the “Customers” tab). When I speak with a rep I’m told “you have to enter your COMCAST e-mail address.” I didn’t even remember I had a Comcast email address; never used it before. I enter it and login successfully.
This makes me wonder why they don’t tell you “Your user name is your Comcast email address” and how many support calls they could avoid by adding one word.
File this under “Not thinking about your website from your visitors’ point of view.”
Why RFPs are a bad idea if you want a good website.
January 5, 2010
It seems like a reasonable process: Write up your requirements, pass them along to some web design firms, and get them to tell you how much it’ll cost. Then you evaluate their proposals: Apples, oranges, bananas and kiwis. Maybe you eliminate the lowest and highest bids and go with the one in the middle. Maybe you love kiwis. Maybe this method will work.
We don’t think an RFP is likely to identify the best fit or deliver optimal results for your business.
Buying professional services isn’t about price, it’s about value. If you’re buying a million widgets and all the vendors are selling the same widget, the lowest price wins. But for something as complex as a website, each firm will offer a different approach. How do you know which one is most likely to achieve your business goals?
By setting the project budget you eliminate price as a factor in your decision. This is actually a good thing because it allows you to compare the value each firm offers. You select the best firm you can afford.
Most businesses don’t have the expertise or objectivity to know what they need to achieve their objectives. For a web design firm to deliver the best solution they should be involved in the process as early as possible.
So how do you find the best fit? Start by setting a budget and identifying the problems you’re trying to solve and desired outcomes. Then ask friends and colleagues for referrals. Used LinkedIn. Search, of course. Visit other industry-related sites and see who designed the sites you like most. Take a look at each firm’s work, not just their portfolio, but their blog, articles, and case studies.
When you’ve got a short list, send them a document that summarizes your needs and goals. Have a conversation with each firm and ask them to explain their approach. How well do they listen? Who asks the best questions? Have they completed similar projects? After you’ve identified the leading candidate, ask for and check references. When there is a verbal agreement you’ll want to see a contract and confirm that it meets your requirements and reflects your understanding.
Our advice is to avoid RFPs if possible. A less formal approach may be quicker and more effective. Do you have any RFP success stories? How about horror stories?
10 Reasons Why Your Sales Director Shouldn’t Build Your Company Website
December 14, 2009
The new Director of Sales announced he will build our new site himself. (You can’t hear me sighing and wanting to smack my head against the wall, but I am!). Can you help me explain to the CEO why it’s a fundamental error to underfund and get this wrong?
– Smacking Head Against Wall
Dear SHAW,
Take two aspirin. Here’s how I’d present it to the CEO.
- Objectivity. It’s the one thing nobody in your company has. This includes the Director of Sales (DOS). Why does that matter? Because a successful website keeps the focus on visitors and helps them achieve their goals. Many companies fall into the trap of navel-gazing (we do this, we do that) without ever thinking about what visitors really need.
- Are you offering some off-the-shelf commodity to your clients? If so, an off-the-shelf website is fine. If not, you want an online identity of your own. A less than top-notch design will undermine your brand and your message.
- The ability to easily make edits, add PDFs, videos and other documents is essential. The staff should not have to learn Dreamweaver and call me Claire Voyent but I predict that DOS isn’t always going to be available to make updates.
- We frequently review corporate sites where the only call to action is a link to the contact page (“See? There it is in the footer!”) and then there’s no contact form, auto-reply, or staff notification.
- Your website should be the hub of your marketing strategy. Does DOS know how to make this happen? Can he integrate the various elements with a consistent look and feel? Search Engine Optimization, if it’s a consideration, needs to be figured into the content and structure of the site.
- There’s plenty to keep DOS busy, what with your blog, Facebook, Twitter, Slideshare, newsletter etc. Why add web design and development to the list?
- What about the optimal hosting environment? Download speeds? Compliance with web standards? Browser compatibility issues? Does DOS know how to make sure the site looks OK in IE8? Even web professionals find this tricky sometimes.
- Who will manage DOS? The CEO? When we develop a site we include a project schedule with a timeline and milestones and we manage the project to make sure it stays on track.
- A good website lays the foundation for future growth. You shouldn’t have to start from scratch a year down the road when DOS or the CEO realizes it needs to do something it can’t do.
- Finally, doesn’t DOS have anything else to do? Our most successful clients are really busy doing their jobs, not trying to do work for which they are less (or un) qualified. DOS is not SELLING if he’s designing and building websites. What’s his time worth? That needs to get figured into the do-it-yourself cost.
Anybody have a success story or horror story to share? Names may be changed to protect the innocent.
