If you haven’t tried to get accredited by the Better Business Bureau, you should really consider it. They give out accreditations to stellar businesses which can be an instant trust signal to your potential customers.<\/div>\n
<\/span>5. Gather Testimonials<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
When it comes to creating, discovering, or innovating, people love to be first.<\/p>\n
But when it comes to experimenting, testing, and using, people prefer to let others play the guinea pig. Testimonials<\/a> are a great way of showing visitors that your business has been used and is approved by others.<\/p>\n
In fact, testimonials are one of the strongest forms of social proof you can leverage. BigCommerce\u00a0found that when visitors see testimonials on your site<\/a>:<\/p>\n
\n
58% are more likely to convert<\/li>\n
Your website generates 62% more revenue per visitor<\/li>\n
People spend 3% more (on average) per order<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Fortunately, getting testimonials from your customers<\/a> is super easy.<\/p>\n
Plus, you can also automatically display testimonials from social media on your site with a plugin like Smash Balloon<\/a>.<\/p>\n
$\"smash$ <\/a><\/p>\n
For example, with Smash Balloon’s Custom Twitter Feeds Pro<\/a>, you can display a feed of tweets that mention your account or a feed of tweets that include your branded hashtag.<\/p>\n
Here’s what it looks like:<\/p>\n
$\"twitter$ <\/p>\n
These types of testimonials also inspire a healthy dose of fear of missing out<\/a> (FOMO) for your other visitors. This makes a lot of visitors feel really enticed to engage with your calls to action.<\/p>\n
And as you know, that can lead to huge boosts in your conversions rates and overall revenue.<\/p>\n
<\/span>6. Show Current or Past Clients Who Are Well-Known<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Much like testimonials, showing your current or past clients can be another great form of social proof to show that you (and your site) are reputable.<\/p>\n
The goal is to add clients who are well-known to most people so you can borrow some of their credibility.<\/p>\n
Awesome Motive<\/a> goes a step beyond. Not only do they list their featured clients, but they also include a list of publications where their articles have been published:<\/p>\n
$\"Featured-Clients-from-Awesome-Motives-homepage\"$ <\/p>\n
This borrows credibility not just from their world-renown clients, but also from widely read publications. This is an excellent strategy on how to make your website more trustworthy.<\/p>\n
<\/span>7. Build Your Presence on Social Media<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\nThough this doesn\u2019t technically fall under the umbrella of \u201cbuilding your site\u201d in a way that inspires trust, your social media presence<\/a> is definitely a factor here. That\u2019s because your site\u2019s online reputation<\/a> extends far beyond your company\u2019s URL.<\/p>\n
The way that you interact with other people online says a lot about your brand\u2019s personality. And as a business owner, you have a responsibility to engage with your customers.<\/p>\n
How are you responding to online reviews<\/a>, especially the negative ones<\/a>? Are you getting back to your customers\u2019 comments or questions? Do you regularly provide value from your social media posts?<\/p>\n
These are the kinds of questions your clients won\u2019t explicitly ask out loud. But they\u2019ll definitely take notice if it looks like you have no online presence outside of your site. Make sure you clearly display the icons for the social media platforms you are active on.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s an example from OptinMonster\u2019s homepage<\/a> near the bottom footer:<\/p>\n
$\"OptinMonster$ <\/p>\n
These small icons don\u2019t just give your visitors another way of contacting you. They also provide a little more assurance that your company is reputable, active, and engaged with your target audience.<\/p>\n
So if you’ve ever wondered how do you build credibility online, displaying your social media icons is certainly a factor.<\/p>\n
<\/span>8. Include Contact Information in the Header Menu<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
One of the worst feelings from a potential customer\u2019s perspective? Having a question or a problem and having no clue how to get in touch with you with your customer service department.<\/p>\n
You should have your contact information readily available from every page on your site. This is related to displaying social media icons (as discussed in the last tip), but your contact information needs to be even more available and upfront<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
The best solution is to add your contact information in your site\u2019s main navigational header<\/a> menu:<\/p>\n
$\"Homepage$ <\/p>\n
Why is this important? Because customers want to know that communication isn\u2019t just a 1-way street.<\/p>\n
Even if a customer never has any reason to get a hold of you, simply knowing that they can is a large factor in earning their trust. In other words, proudly displaying your contact information is an awesome solution for how to earn trust with customers online!<\/p>\n
<\/span>9. Use Positive Action Notification Popups<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\nThis is one last bit of social proof<\/a> that you can use to tackle the age-old question:<\/p>\n
How do you establish trust in an online business?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
Positive action notification popups let other users know when someone has subscribed to or made a purchase on your site.<\/p>\n
They look something like this:<\/p>\n
$\"Social-Proof-Popup-by-TrustPuls\"$ <\/p>\n
But don\u2019t let this small notification fool you. At TrustPulse<\/a>, we\u2019ve shown that these positive action notification popups can increase sales and revenue by 15%!<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a lot of software like TrustPulse that will let you add this function to your site. But here\u2019s a quick word of warning, though:<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t choose companies that encourage or allow fake social proof signals<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, positive action notification popups can\u2019t always be trusted. That\u2019s because some companies encourage the use of fake social proof<\/a>. The problem is that when people learn you\u2019re using a company that allows fake social proof, they\u2019ll assume yours is fake, too (even if it\u2019s not!).<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why we\u2019re proud of the fact that TrustPulse doesn\u2019t offer anything other than genuine positive action notification popups. We allow users to broadly display this form of social proof across their entire website to enhance their users’ experience<\/a>.<\/p>\n
And since we\u2019ve built our reputation on white hat marketing strategies, your site\u2019s visitors won\u2019t need to question whether or not these notifications are authentic.<\/p>\n
So regardless of which software you choose to display these types of notifications, just be sure that they don\u2019t allow fake social proof.<\/p>\n
We hope that you learned a thing or two (or 9) from this article! Do you have any tips for building a website your users can trust that we missed?<\/p>\n
If so, you can let us know in the comments below. Or follow us on Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a> and let us know there!<\/p>\n
And would you like to boost your site\u2019s sales by 15%? All it takes is one simple change\u2026 so don\u2019t wait! Join the TrustPulse community today<\/a>.<\/p>\n
We hope you found this article helpful. If so, you may want to check out the following posts:<\/p>\n
\n
Social Proof Statistics: 42 Reasons Your Business Needs Social Proof<\/a><\/li>\n
Best Social Proof Apps for Shopify<\/a><\/li>\n
FOMO vs. Proof vs. TrustPulse: Comparison<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here\u2019s a textbook lesson straight from Social Psychology 101: Relationships can\u2019t survive and will certainly never thrive without trust. That fundamental fact is true in your friendships, your family ties, and yes, even with your clients. But the problem is that you have a lot more work to do when building trust with clients than<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":1913,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"limit_modified_date":"1","last_modified_date":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[957,955,958,956,959],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trustpulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1896"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trustpulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trustpulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trustpulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trustpulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1896"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/trustpulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9602,"href":"https:\/\/trustpulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1896\/revisions\/9602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trustpulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trustpulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trustpulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trustpulse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}