Trust Enablers in Digital Marketing

Trust. It begins friendships and creates empires. It’s the difference between an acquaintance and a friend. And today, more than ever before, it’s the fundamental element to successful marketing.

Your website is more than an online business card or brochure, it’s the new pitching platform and no matter what you’re selling, what you need to earn is trust. The bigger question here, is how do you build trust on the web? Luckily, elements of trust in digital marketing are a Rise specialty.

One of our most important messages that we establish for new customers is that beauty is only screen deep. No matter how incredible the visual design, your website must serve your business goals, which for most business owners, those goals revolve around increasing bottom line results. The act of turning a visitor into a lead or sale is called a conversion.

If you’re looking to increase your online conversions, there’s really only one way to do it: earning trust. 

There are four definitive elements of trust to put into play when designing a web site for any business that we use at Rise. To optimize and increase your odds of conversion, your website must be:

• Findable. You must be able to be found through major search engines. Your potential customers assume that if your site is hard to find, you must not be important. If you were, you’d be at the top of their search with other authoritative organizations. Therefore to trust in your authority and relevance, your site must be findable.
• Usable. Your site must be on-topic and easy to navigate. You have approximately seven seconds to give or show a visitor what they searched for or they will leave your site thinking that you are off-topic or that they need to do a better search. They need to be able to find what they are looking for easily, too. If there is any confusion about where to find what they seek, a visitor will leave in frustration to visit another site.
• Clear. No matter what you sell, it must be abundantly clear on the very first glance of your homepage exactly what you do and how it relates to your visitors’ search. If there is any indication of dissonance between what they’re looking for and what you’re actually selling, they’ll leave immediately to avoid feeling scammed.
• Compelling. A website must compel its visitors to move forward with you and the best way to do this is to focus on your visitor’s needs. Make it about the client to make it irresistible for them. By emphasizing the how, what, and especially why of your business in relation to your customers, you’ll have much better odds of drawing a visitor deeper into your site or to score a conversion.

These are the four elements that enable trust. If you’re ranking high in these things, your visitors see your level of authority and feel they can rely on you, making them far more likely to convert.

Obviously, if your site is lacking in these elements, it inhibits trusts. As a visitor, if your site isn’t usable and your message isn’t clear, I won’t trust you and certainly won’t buy from you. If I can’t find you, I obviously won’t buy from you, and if you don’t make your brand and your products compelling enough to convince me that you and your product are a better fit for me and my circumstances than your competitor...I won’t buy from you.

In your overall digital marketing campaign, these elements of trust reach far beyond your main website to include:

• E-mail campaigns
• Newsletters
• Blogs
• Social media

For example, by posting something on Twitter that is not in line with what visitors expect, you cloud your message, your brand and your storytelling. In confusing your audience about who you are, you lose their trust.

To summarize, visitors must be able to find your site at the top of major search engines to believe your authority. Once they can find you, be sure to put a premium on your site’s usability by making your information easy for visitors to find, or they’ll bounce! Compel them to explore your site deeper by plainly connecting the dots between their lives and your products. Always be clear up front about who you are, what you do, and why you do it exceptionally well. If your visitors are not able to know these things easily, it is difficult for them to get past page one!

Is your website as trustworthy as it could be? Could you use a hand in implementing these trust enablers? We’d be delighted to speak with you about the state of your site and what can be done to improve it, lower your bounce rate, and increase your conversions. Feel free to contact us by phone, email, or stop by the office. We can’t wait to enable you!