If you run an online business, you’ll need to put a lot of time and effort into winning your audience’s trust. This can help to improve customer loyalty, increase awareness of your brand, and ultimately lead to more sales.
Earning the trust of strangers who’ve only ever encountered your business through a screen isn’t the easiest thing to do, though. So, in this article, we’re going to provide you with five easy ways you can show website visitors your business can be trusted so they’re more tempted to buy from you. Read on to learn more.
Always provide the best possible customer service
In order to trust you, your customers will need to feel listened to and that you truly understand their pain points, concerns, and requirements. So, whenever a prospective client reaches out to you with a worry or question, you need to ensure they’re provided with the best customer service possible. This will greatly increase the chances of them shopping with you and is also likely to improve your customer retention rate.
To provide great customer service, it’s important that you provide multiple communication methods so people can get in touch in a way that they’re comfortable with. For instance, older generations tend to prefer phone or email customer service, while younger people may feel better about reaching out via social media or an instant messaging option on your website.
To get an idea of what kinds of customer service channels you should be providing, consider surveying your existing customers. Which communication channels do they like to use? Chances are their answers will reflect those of your future customers, too.
However, it’s worth noting that you won’t want to spread your customer service team too thin — it’s better to provide just a couple of contact options that you can manage well instead of providing too many and struggling to stay on top of everything. As well as catering to as many people as possible with your communication channels, you’ll also want to ensure all calls or messages are answered quickly, thoroughly, and professionally to keep your customers happy. This will help to put their minds at ease and prove they can always trust you to do a great job.
Consistently publish expert content on your website
Your customers will want to know that you don’t just talk the talk, but you also walk the walk. So, in order to show them that you’re truly an expert in your field and know your work inside and out, you need to be consistently publishing content on your website that demonstrates this. People who check out your blog or knowledge hub and see that it’s populated with articles that show off your skills and knowledge will be far more likely to trust and buy from you.
In order to create content that is going to provide a lot of value for your audience while showing you’re great at what you do, you’ll have to identify the best topics to cover. There are a number of ways you can choose your subjects. For instance, you could use a keyword research tool to see what your target customers are researching, ask your customer service team what they get asked about the most, or simply think about the areas of your business that your prospective clients will want to know more about. By exploring these topics on your blog, you’ll find it much easier to win website visitors’ trust.
Publishing expert content on your website can also do wonders for your SEO, which is going to help you reach more of the right people. This is because the search engine Google pays a lot of attention to a website’s E-A-T, or expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness when deciding how to rank its pages for relevant queries. So, by showcasing your knowledge, you’ll also show search engines that they can trust you so they’ll feel more confident about promoting your business to the masses.
To give you some inspiration when it comes to creating your own expert content, let’s take a look at a couple of companies that always get this right.
RMIT Online specializes in providing online programs and courses for those who wish to work in a range of sectors including analytics, project management, and marketing. As a result, prospective students will want to be confident that the online study provider knows these industries well so can provide them with real-world skills and knowledge that will help them to forge successful careers. To win their audience’s trust, RMIT Online regularly publishes blog posts that show this is the case.
For instance, they have a great article on whether we’re facing an oversupply of data scientists. Because they offer courses in data analytics, a lot of their prospective students may be concerned about this, so the institution has created this piece, showing off their knowledge while also putting their readers’ worries to rest.
When you’re creating content for your own website, consider what kinds of concerns your customers might have before shopping with or hiring you. Then, create content that will show they have nothing to worry about and that you fully understand both your audience and the industry you work in. It will really help you to win the trust of those who may be interested in your services.
AdWords Nerds is another company that does a great job of showing off its expertise through content. It is an online marketing agency that works exclusively with real estate investors, so they put a lot of work into showing they know the space well, totally understand what their clients need, and can help them reach their goals.
For instance, they have a detailed guide to PPC for real estate investors, which goes into great detail about why their ideal clients should set up pay-per-click advertising campaigns and how they can get the best possible results from them. This piece of content is fantastic for showing that the company truly understands what kinds of marketing techniques their target customers should be using, and how they can reach their goals with PPC. Any real estate investors who read this guide and take a lot of value from it will be much more likely to trust the company and invest in their services down the line.
Is there an ultimate guide you could create to help out your target audience and win their trust? If so, next time they need products or services like yours, you’ll be top of mind and will be far more likely to win their business, too.
Showcase positive reviews from past customers
You can tell your website visitors that you’re great at what you do as many times as you like but, to really earn their trust, it’s a good idea to also provide them with a second opinion. And you can do this easily and effectively by displaying positive customer feedback on your most important web pages, such as your homepage and service pages.
Reviews can come in many different forms and the best choice for you will typically depend on the type of business you run. For instance, star ratings are ideal for product-based companies that offer a lot of similar items a customer might want to compare, while short and snappy reviews can provide some additional information without being too overwhelming.
If you run a service-based business, written or video reviews are likely to be the best option. This is because they’ll give your past clients a chance to highlight what problems they were having, explain how you were able to help, and talk about the results you were able to get for them. You’ll also want to place your reviews in spots on your website where people are likely to find them when they’re close to making a decision. So, near the top of your service pages or even on a web page of their own can work well.
Florin Roebig, a multi-state trial and litigation firm, does a fantastic job of showcasing positive social proof on their website using a combination of star ratings and written testimonials. This approach is very effective as it caters to different types of prospective clients. For instance, anyone who might be in a rush and wants to find a reputable attorney quickly will see the five-star rating and know that the company’s lawyers are great at what they do. And, anyone who wants more context about the types of cases they tend to handle, how they treat their clients, and what kinds of results they get can read the written testimonial for more context.
The firm has also included a headshot and the name of the person who provided the review, which gives it an extra dash of credibility. All of these elements work well together to help the company earn people’s trust, which will lead to them securing more cases.
It’s important that you add positive reviews to your website like Florin Roebig has, too. It will show that your previous clients have been very happy with the quality of your work and that future customers can trust you to do a great job for them, too.
Focus on humanizing your business
Consumers find it easier to trust other people over faceless corporations. So, when you’re aiming to win people over and secure their business, you’ll want to work on humanizing your company.
Naturally, images and videos are ideal for showing the people behind your brand, so aim to include some photos and video clips of those you work with on your website. You could introduce everyone on your ‘about us’ page with headshots, feature behind-the-scenes videos of your staff on your blog, and even showcase images of your team working throughout your website. It might seem like a relatively small change that you can make, but it can do a great job of helping people who’ve never shopped with you before to feel a stronger connection to your business. This will then help you to earn their trust and could lead to more sales.
For instance, Husky Senior Care is a company that provides home care services for the elderly, and they do a fantastic job of humanizing their business on their website’s homepage. It’s incredibly important that anyone looking to hire carers fully trusts the company they choose to go with. It isn’t a decision that can be made lightly because, due to the nature of their work, carers generally support and look after people when they’re at their most vulnerable. So, whether someone’s looking to hire help for themselves or a family member, they’ll want to be sure they’ve found a reputable company that has their clients’ interests at heart.
You can see this is the case for Husky Senior Care as soon as you land on your website. There are photos of their carers looking after and having a lovely time with their clients, and there’s also a homepage video that introduces the main faces behind the company. Website visitors can meet everyone from the founder of the business to the company’s care manager, which is sure to put their minds at ease. This is a great tool for earning prospective clients’ trust.
This is an approach most businesses will be able to take, so you should certainly consider creating a video to introduce your staff to the people they could be helping in the future. It’s a great way to show there are real people behind your brand and will help to build a connection with those who land on your website, earning their trust.
Sunway University also does a fantastic job of humanizing its faculty throughout its website. For instance, if someone wants to learn more about the Sunway MBA Online, they can visit the school’s web page for the course and will be introduced to the people who will be teaching them should they enroll.
As you can see, on this specific page, the school highlights all of the different academics working in this particular department, which will help to put future students at ease as they’ll know who they’re going to see before they even pay the university a visit. All of the teachers’ qualifications are shown under their headshots, too, which shows that they’re really experts in their fields and are sure to provide a high level of support and training for their students. Plus, website visitors can even click “learn more” if they would like to read more about the team’s backgrounds.
This is sure to help the institution win their audience’s trust and it’s an approach most businesses could take on their own sites. If a lot of your staff members spend time talking to and helping your clients, putting a face to them on your website can be very helpful for building a connection. Then, whenever someone calls or visits your premises, they’ll feel far more at ease from the very beginning.
Show off your company values
Finally, another effective way to win your audience’s trust is by showing off your values so people can see if they align with theirs. The company culture of brands they shop with is becoming increasingly important to consumers and people are more inclined to trust companies that clearly have a lot of heart. So, to secure more customers and boost your bottom line, it’s well worth highlighting any important values you have.
There are different types of values your brand could adopt and highlight throughout your website. For instance, you could set up your own charity initiative that means a certain percentage of your profits is given to a charity you believe in, you could focus on publishing content that highlights worthy causes your customers can support, or you may wish to strive to make your business environmentally friendly. Any of these approaches will resonate with a lot of people, earn their trust, and lead to more sales for your company.
Summary
Winning your audience’s trust is the key to making more sales and improving your customer retention rate. In this article, we provided you with some expert tips that will help you to show people that you run a quality and trustworthy brand, so take them on board and you’ll soon start to see the results.
Author: Adam Steele is the COO at Loganix, an SEO fulfillment partner for agencies and marketers. We build easy-to-use SEO services that help businesses scale. If you liked this article, please check out our SEO guides and templates on the Loganix blog.