Whether you’re selling a product or service or solely providing information, it’s essential to build trust among your visitors. If they don’t trust you, they won’t spend money with you, and the information you provide will be viewed with suspicion or dismissed altogether.
A premium WordPress theme is always a great place to start, as a website that looks like someone has spent time and effort to create will always appeal to people and reinforce your message. From there, you can tweak your site for more trust and conversions with these handy tips:
HTTPS Protection
If you haven’t got it already, HTTPS protection is a must. It affects your search rankings, and some browsers won’t even let users visit a site without a valid certificate for their own safety. To overcome that block, users might be required to manually whitelist a site that interests them. Moving a site to HTTPS may seem tricky at first, but there are plenty of guides out there to help it along.
Naturally, this is WordPress we’re talking about, so there are popular plugins like Really Simple SSL to help it along too.
Genuine Customer Reviews
The days of people falling for reviews hosted on the same website they’re promoting are mainly behind us. However, they can still play a part, especially if the commendation comes from someone with a name or reputation of their own. However, nothing beats honest customer reviews from third parties.
If you have a Trustpilot profile, you can integrate it with your WordPress website in short order. There are also widgets available to pull in reviews from Google, Welp, and Tripadvisor, among others.
Social Media Integration
One of the best things about social media for business websites is that they’re an easy opportunity to keep things fresh. For example, you might not want to spend hours crafting 2,000 words for a blog post to show people you’re active, but you might have two minutes to tweet about a product or service.
If the most recent Tweet, Facebook post, or other social interaction displays on your site and is within a few days of a visit, they know your site is ready to serve them. But, of course, that works both ways. If you integrate your social accounts into your WordPress site and haven’t updated them in years, it might be worth removing them as people might form the wrong opinion.
A Genuine, Unique About Page
People love stories. Give them something to resonate with, and they’re more likely to form a bond with your brand.
Most sites have an about page, not least because they’re required to get into many affiliate programs and advertising networks. However, if you treat yours as something you’re proud of rather than an admin exercise you have to do, you have an opportunity to make people feel good about you and your brand.
Real Contact Details
Not every site needs contact details. Some, especially information-driven sites, prefer not to be contacted at all! However, if you’re a business that sells products or services, people like to know they can get in touch with questions and, more importantly, if something goes wrong.
If you really want to boost trust, you need to get out of thinking that a contact form and email address are all it takes. Add an actual phone number, even if it only takes messages. Integrate your Google My Business profile on your site with your physical location – that also carries the benefit of bringing your reviews onto the site as outlined previously.
A Customer-Focused Email Policy
The internet has been around for long enough now that people are tired of SPAM. There are plenty of email marketing plugins for WordPress and plenty of tools out there to test your emails before they go out. Furthermore, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with building a list and contacting everyone as frequently as you see fit.
However, it’s vital to put the customer first. So make it clear what you’ll send and when – vaguely, of course, as you don’t want to miss an opportunity to promote a product launch. Let them know what data you collect and why on your website, and reassure them that you do everything you can to keep it safe. Under no circumstances should you sell your list on if you want to build a loyal customer base, and you can tweak your policy text to that effect.
Wrapping Up
Trust is more important than ever before, and customer experience is a crucial part of business and SEO nowadays. A few simple tweaks to your WordPress site can massively build trust among new and existing customers, which will undoubtedly result in more sales and greater brand loyalty.
