Adding on to the Terrible and Terrific Tuesday post on credibility, today we’ll look at how credibility on the web is established and what the different factors and layers are that affect how people perceive your website’s trustworthiness.
First Layer: Claim Credibility
As professionals in the web industry, we often associate credibility with specific pages or content on a website that talk about the history of a company, privacy policies, awards/certifications, testimonials, and other self-promoting words. Statements like “Quality widget manufacturer since 1701” or “Privacy Policy” pages were the standard go-to techniques to help increase credibility and distinguish the company from others. These became commonplace because that’s what users said they wanted, and for some time, they worked.
However, these techniques became diluted and are now expected on a website as a standard. They are still very important to establish credibility, but they don’t serve as unique differentiators any more. I refer to these techniques as the first layer of my Credibility Cake(™).
Second Layer: Visual Appeal
The second layer of establishing credibility is the visual design. Almost half of all consumers assess credibility based on the visual appeal of the design. The interesting thing is that there is a mismatch between what users think is important to them versus what their actual behavior is when browsing a website. Users claim that the first layer information was most important to them (such as having a privacy policy page), but when actually asked to evaluate credibility, users used the site’s design and never bothered to even look at a privacy policy page (Consumer WebWatch, How Do People Evaluate a Web Site’s Credibility?). From our experience, it is not only important to have a visually appealing website, but to also make sure that design is consistent throughout the entire website. Often with third party applications, websites have varying designs and layouts due to different technical restrictions. These types of design inconsistencies due to technology choices can have a huge effect on website credibility, especially if these pages involve the transaction of personal information (such as request forms).
Third Layer: User Experience
This leads us to what I call the third layer of credibility, which is the overall user experience. After the first two layers are established, once a user begins interacting with a website, the experience ultimately defines credibility. If the site is an e-commerce website, and the shopping cart is clunky or slow, these are greater problems for credibility than something from the first layer such as not having a “Hacker Safe” logo on the site.
By considering these three layers, we can make sure we are covering any areas of the website that may be affecting the site’s credibility. The important thing to note is that it is all about the perceived credibility of the site. You could be the oldest, respected, trusted business in your industry, but if your site is lacking in any one of these areas online, it can be hard to compete with smaller, newer businesses with a stronger established sense of credibility and trust online.
