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.
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.
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.
What do you have to do to get Norton accreditation for example?
You buy a Symantec SSL certificate and implement that on your website.
The other companies listed above are Trust based rather than simply SSL recognition.
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 comments as well as positive ones
- where appropriate – pictures of the management.
Make your website trusted for genuine reasons – don’t shortcut.
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