The first steps in having your website trusted are the obvious ones – make sure there is nothing that would concern people e.g. selling items of dubious or inconsistent quality, excessive advertising, advertising of business such as gambling, over promising on products or services then being unable to meet those promises, poor customer service, excessive profit margins, inaccurate advertising, poor quality website etc.

You have to provide good products at the right price and back that up with excellent customer service.

Once you have eliminated anything that could put people off then you’re left with two basic things – building a good reputation and hoping for great online reviews by your customers.

These both need a lot of time and effort to happen. Good reputations don’t happen overnight and people will only add great reviews when your sales process, quality of products and services, customer service etc. are top notch.

Note that Marketing cannot increase the trustworthiness of your web site.

There is another way to increase trust and that is to become accredited by the various relevant bodies for whatever industry you are in and also to be accredited or registered with the various bodies that review websites.

Recent research shows that most customers don’t understand security on the Internet but they do trust various organisations and hence trust their judgements on trustworthy websites.

To the question “Which badge gives you the best sense of trust when paying online” the results show

• Norton 36%
• MacAfee 23%
• TRUSTe
• BBB

Other badges did also register but these four were the most recognised and trusted by far.

To get Norton accreditation – you simply buy a Symantec SSL certificate and implement that on your website.

The other companies listed above require more than an SSL certificate.

As well as the trusted badges, in assessing a website, consumers report that they look for qualities including

• up to date information
• fresh content
• easy ways to contact the business
• honesty about any problems
• negative customer comments as well as positive ones are evidence of honesty
• where appropriate – pictures of the management.

Make your website trusted for genuine reasons – don’t shortcut.

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