Building a well established and trusted website is not an easy task. New customers can be quite tricky to retain and so is trust, as it is known “Trust is hard to gain, but easy to lose“. The same is true for online businesses and websites. A well planned and executed online presence can help you gain trust of thousands of web users and customers. This will keep them coming back to your website time and again and trust also attracts new customers and users to a website.
When it comes to establishing trust on the web, it is not only trust in the eyes of the website visitors and users, but also in the eyes of the Search Engines which regularly crawl the web and index websites and web pages. Using shady promotion and marketing techniques can put off your customers, as well as cause problems on the Search Engines. This article discusses some of the most important aspects which can help you build trust on the internet, and stay ahead of your competition.
Patience and Time - One of the most important things to consider before starting an authority website is that you need to be patient. Success does not come all of a sudden. A well established and trusted website can take years to establish, and needs regular time, effort and updates. Many authority websites on the net are more than 5 - 10 years old, and have achieved success with time.
Implementing a Well Planned Promotion and Expansion Plan - Before a website is started, it is essential to make an execution plan. An initial plan helps you to stay focused on what you have to do and when. Without a plan, you will stay unfocused and will end up wasting time, with no substantial result in the end.
When you work on your plan, it is essential to meet deadlines, and promote the website slowly. Rushing through the promotion process, like getting a lot of links quickly, can cause problems for a website. Also, excessively promoting a new website can result in the website getting penalized. Following a plan can help you avoid all such problems.
Valuable Content - Making a trusted website requires regular updates, research and giving information to the users which is helpful for them. This requires a lot of time and effort to write content and regularly update it to the web. Valuable content not only attracts users and search engines, but it also attracts natural links to the web pages. These deep links to internal pages of the website help improve the websites popularity and prominence on the search engines, which helps drive traffic from the search engines to the website.
Content is considered food for the search engine spiders and unique content regularly updated to a website keeps the search engines coming back for more. Users also look for interesting content, which they have not read on other websites. Regularly updating your website with valuable content ensures that your website will receive the attention from both users and search engines.
Developing a Professional Website - The look and feel of a website is another important factor to consider when making a website. A professional web design which is user friendly and easy to navigate will keep users on the site for a longer time.
A professional website not only involves a good design, but it should be well developed, easy to maintain and should be Search Engine Friendly as well. Trusted sites regularly add features, tools, images and options on their website to attract their readers for new and exciting things. These additions also give websites a competitive advantage. Professionally developed websites regularly update their technologies to keep them up-to-date with the latest trends in the industry. An old and neglected website is unlikely to attract customers to it.
Avoiding blatant marketing and self-promotion - Often websites add a lot of marketing stuff on their pages to encourage the users to buy something from them. Most website users visit websites to find information regarding a product, read reviews or find answers to their questions. Websites which give less information and focus on promoting products only can never gain trust of their users.
Similarly, too many banners, pop-up ads, promotional titles and affiliate links will not help you gain trust from the users or search engines. Web pages that focus on only selling products or services do not get repeat customers.
Allow user interaction - A lot of websites do not bother to put up a Contact Us page or an email address or phone number where users can contact them regarding information about the products or services that they sell. Building trust also involves telling the customers who you are, and what you do. If you allow your customers to contact you, to help them solve any problems or provide them information regarding a topic, it will help gain their trust. Live Chat or Online Help options are also helpful as they tell the users that they are communication with real people.
Adding a forum, message board or blog on your website also encourages user interaction and comments which can keep them coming back to ask questions or look for answers. Articles, reviews, blog posts, comments and forum discussions produce honest and valuable content for your visitors. This will help you maintain trust with your readers which will help you in the long-run.
Communicating with your website users at a personal level helps a lot in building trust. Some companies even put up a “Call me back” form to talk with the clients personally, over phone, to help them solve their problems. Personal blogs often require the blogger to post his / her pictures, and this also gives the visitors satisfaction in knowing that they are contacting a human instead of a computer. Similarly, business websites often add photos and profiles of their team on their websites, which is another way of gaining trust.
Building trust on the web can be a difficult, tedious and time consuming thing. Users do not like to visit websites which are only there to sell things, without giving any information regarding the products they sell. Successful sites do intense and in-depth research and comparisons to gain trust of their visitors, and this often takes a lot of years.
Earning trust through your own efforts gives the most long lasting results, and your customers will come back to you again and again. Your loyal customers can help spread the word around to their relatives and friends, which is the second most important factor of building trust online.
Earned trust and personal recommendation are two of the most important ways to gain trust online. They make users more comfortable with you and also with the information you provide to them.
July 25th, 2008 at 10:32 am
[…] must be easy to read, easy to navigate, and fast loading. This would be a plus point for you in building trust, attracting customers and will keep them coming back for […]
August 12th, 2008 at 8:27 am
[…] to your targeted clients, then it establishes your position as an expert in the field and increases your trust and credibility. Also, it can help in gaining confidence and generating reader loyalty by discussing issues to […]
August 12th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
[…] Adding a blog to your business website and updating it regularly with latest news, events and happenings can benefit your business a great deal. It can help your business in more ways than one. A business blog can facilitate you to get found more easily and it helps build your influence as a respected and trusted source of information. […]
August 19th, 2008 at 4:05 am
[…] websites and those of educational institutions also gain trust and build authority by staying on the web for a long time, and also by getting natural links from […]
August 20th, 2008 at 8:23 am
[…] duplicate content can help improve your website on the search engines, as well as help to build trust among the website visitors. This entry was published on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 8:22 am and is categorized under […]
August 28th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
[…] trust sites, which provide poor quality content and information to the users. These websites do not build trust and also do not get return visitors. This entry was published on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at […]
September 1st, 2008 at 11:16 am
[…] cost. This will ultimately urge them to come back for more information. Once you have established trust and reliability, they would keep coming back and you’ll get repeat and loyal […]