A lot of online entrepreneurs fail because they do not understand the value of trust signals. A trust signal is nothing more than a piece of text or logo that you put on your site. These things have a positive psychological impact on your cold traffic—something that can convince them to buy from you.
But what are these? Today, I will show you the 10 important trust signals to turbocharge your website’s conversion rate.
- Financial Trust Badges
- Security Trust Badges
- Customer Reviews
- SSL Certificate
- Chat, Address, Phone Number, and Email Address
- Professional Web design
- Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions
- Social Media Badges
- High-Quality Content
- Client logos or “As Seen On” Logos
1. Financial Trust Badges
These are symbols of financial institutions. Most of these are credit card supplier symbols like VISA, Mastercard, etc. Some website owners also put the symbol of PayPal.
You do not have to get permission from these institutions to put their logos on your site. But make sure that you do accept them as a mode of payment. You can copy their logo and put them on specific areas of your site, especially near the add-to-cart buttons.
How do these things help? Many financial institutions are international brands. People easily recognize them, and they also have accounts with these institutions. If you have a VISA logo on your store, and I have a VISA card, then I know that I can use it to buy from you.
2. Security Trust Badges
Security trust badges are important to let people know that your website is secure from malware, hacking, spyware, and many other bad elements. These badges are logos. The most commonly used are McAfee and Norton.
Now, you cannot just place these badges without being true. You see, McAfee and other security companies have a list of websites that are legit. If your business name is not found on their list, and yet you have their trust badge on your site, people will find out and report you as a scam.
3. Customer Reviews
One of the most important e-commerce trust signals is customer reviews. This is why you need to have an app on your site where your customers who bought your items could leave positive feedback.
One such app is Loox, especially if you have a store on Shopify. With this tool, your customers can leave text reviews of the product they bought. They can also leave photo reviews.
Another method you can use is to solicit your customers to tell you how they feel about your product or service. And then, you can manually put it on your site like this one below:
Customer reviews are effective. They tell people that you are trustworthy, and they will be more inclined to buy.
4. SSL Certificate
An SSL certificate is one that you buy from your domain or web hosting service provider. Instead of having a URL that starts with HTTP, now you have HTTPS.
The extra letter “S” means secure. It tells your website visitors that your website is not malicious and that your servers are also secure.
Today, many internet browsers give their users a warning if they are about to visit a website that is not secure. Some will not even allow users to visit the site. If your website has no SSL, you may not even get traffic. Or, you will get traffic, but the users will not bother sending money on your site.
5. Chat, Address, Phone Number, and Email Address
One of the most important landing page trust signals is your location and a way to contact you. Usually, these details are found at the footer of the page.
You need to put a physical location and contact details so people who visit your site know that you are legit. These things make them feel secure. They can validate your address in many ways, and they can also call you if they have questions.
6. Professional Web Design
A professional web design means that your site is aesthetic and functional. If your site still looks like an old one, like the ones we had in the 1990s, it pretty much tells users that you are not a serious entrepreneur.
To be able to have a professional web design, you can use applications like Elementor and DIVI or Thrive Themes. There are so many options now that it is virtually impossible not to be able to design a good website.
Web design software programs are paid. However, you have the option to use free themes, especially if you are using WordPress or Shopify.
7. Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions
These two are standard pages of websites. They indicate to the site visitor that you are legally liable and that you have limitations.
Privacy Policy revolves around what you do with your customers’ data. You have to be explicit in saying that you are compliant with the laws.
The Terms and Conditions page tells your users what you expect of them. These are policies that may also include your rule for returns and refunds. These two are also SEO trust signals.
8. Social Media Badges
These are icons of Facebook, Instagram, and many others. They are great trust indicators in e-commerce because they tell your users that you are socially active. It tells users that you are socially connected, and therefore you must be legit.
If you put these trust badges on your site, make sure that they are linked to your real social media pages. People will check out who you are and if these things do not work, or if they lead to another social media page, they will not buy anything from you.
9. High-Quality Content
The next trust symbol that will improve your conversion rate is high-quality content. You have to provide helpful articles that solve the problems of your target customers.
If you are selling an online course about clay sculpture, then you must have a blog post about the different types of clay. If you are an affiliate marketer for fish and aquariums, then you must have great content about fishkeeping.
This is a lot of work. You are better off looking for an affordable content writer to do it for you on a regular basis.
10. Client Logos or “As Seen On” Logos
The last on my list of trust indicators in e-commerce is a logo from other companies. For example, you can use logos of your clients or other sites where your products are found.
You can also use logos of other media sites where you have been interviewed or where your products and services appeared.
For example, you can use the logos of newspapers. You can say things like “as seen on the New York Times or Washington Post.”
If you have serviced other companies, you can put their logos on a section of your site, and you can say that you have serviced them.
What this does is it tells users that if big companies have trusted you, so should they. This works wonders, especially so if the clients you have served in the past are well-known brands.
Summary: Trust Signals to Improve Your Website’s Conversion Rate
You do not have to use all of these. What I advise you to do is to choose five of them and implement them on your website right away.
Some of these are really basic, like getting an SSL certificate and adding a privacy policy page. The others are much harder to obtain—all the more reason for you to start working on them now.
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