According to the Louvre, most people look at the Mona Lisa for an average of 15 seconds. If we only give the world's most famous painting 15 seconds of our time, you can only imagine how little time visitors will spend admiring your website! First impressions are important, especially on the Internet. Visitors will judge whether your site is trustworthy and worthwhile within a split second, and, if your website isn't up to par, they'll leave. Reports have shown that most sites have a 40-50% bounce rate, meaning nearly half of visitors bail after only a few seconds - and 70-96% of unsatisfied visitors never come back. How do you know if your site promotes trust? Here are a few elements all trustworthy sites have.
Strong Design
By creating a website that is clean, modern, easy to use and lovely to look at your visitors will inherently trust you more. We've all done a Google search and found ourselves on a site that looks like a time capsule from 1996. Unless you're selling nostalgia to millennials, avoid 90s design and make sure your site looks like it's from the 21st century. For most companies, your website is the home base for all of your marketing efforts, so it's worth investing in good web design and making the face of your brand an attractive one.
Relevant Content
With online news sources and social media channels updating in real time, users have come to expect accurate and up-to-date content everywhere they go. An events page that features last year's conference or a blog that hasn't been updated in six months shows visitors that you aren't active online. Regularly update your content, blog posts and social feeds to show you can be trusted to stay on top of your market.
Dynamic Personality
And while a good-looking website is important, it's just as important that your online personality will attract the right customers. Depending on your audience, this could mean leveraging the academic expertise of your CEO or creating a quirky brand voice. Either way, add some humanity to your site that creates some sort of emotional connection with your visitors that will engender their trust towards you.
If you want to build a positive reputation with your audience (and gain returning customers), make sure your online presence is trustworthy.