When two male baboons want to test the commitment in their relationship, they’ll get right up close to each other and gently grab each other's testicles.

Yep, seriously.

They do this because the ultimate display of trust is to put something valuable (in this case their reproductive future) in the hands of another. At such close range, either baboon could mangle the other, but they don’t – so long as that trust is reciprocated.

Why are we talking about baboons? Because weird as it is, that’s probably the best analogy for trust I’ve ever heard in my life – and it offers a thought to open a conversation on building trust in your content:

Online, Your Website is the "Other Baboon."

Photo via https://www.flickr.com/photos/patries71/215324187/

Before they’re willing to believe what you say, surrender their contact details or fork over their hard-earned cash, they’re scrutinizing every element of your website to see if they can trust you – even if some of that process is subconscious. Every visitor to your site is placing something sensitive in your hands – their trust – and nobody wants to get mangled.

How Do You Build a Website People Trust?

That question matters a lot to me, especially as someone trying to run an ethical website in a historically unethical niche (web hosting reviews). I’ve spent a lot of time researching and testing trust signals to see what sticks – and to try and understand why.

What follows is an analysis of what “trust” really means, how it actually works, and a comprehensive look at every online signal I’ve found that contributes to establishing and maintaining trust.

What Does "Trust" Actually Mean?

Having a proper understanding of trust as a concept helps to set the stage for all that follows. D. M. Rousseau, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, defines trust this way:

“Trust is a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behavior of another”

For marketers, that means using page elements/content to create an experience in which the customer is willing to accept risk; diminish fears while avoiding any violation of visitor expectations that would indicate you are unreliable.

You Gotta Know How To Act!

Lewicki & Tomlinson highlight some critical dimensions of trustworthy behavior, stating that early in a relationship, our trust in another individual (or in this case, a website) is grounded in our evaluation of their ability and integrity:

1. Ability: Demonstrated skill, competence and knowledge of the source. This dimension requires us to believe that the other person is able to perform in a way that meets our expectations.

On the web, meeting this dimension hinges on being able to establish that you are credible and able to deliver on your claims.

2. Integrity: The degree to which the source (your website/business) adheres to principles your visitors accept. This is reflected in your past actions, commitment to fairness and the congruence of what you say you will do and what you actually do.

Online, this is reflected in social proof, the believability of your claims and your ability to deliver on those claims – often shown in how you communicate with the visitor.

Trust is violated when the positive expectations a visitor brings with them are disconfirmed, leading to an appraisal of the situation (That seems sketchy… should I write this site off entirely?) and a distressed emotional state (I’m going to be more cautious/I’m getting out of here).

The bottom line: The signals your website needs to embrace are the ones that your specific customers expect to see.

Heuristics: Your Secret Weapon

One final concept before I bring on the big fancy list of trust signals: heuristics – a secret weapon if you can capitalize on them and your curse if you break them.

Heuristics are essentially experience-based mental shortcuts we all (yes, even you) make to help us to make judgments arrive at decisions more quickly. Some are learned, while some seem to be “hard-coded” into our cognitive processes. For example:

Authority: If an expert believes it, then it’s what I should believe.

Social proof: If people like me are doing it, I should do it too.

Familiarity: If I’ve done it before, it’s what I should do now.

Length: If a report/essay is longer, it is stronger. (“Thud” factor)

Peak-end rule: We judge the entire value of our experiences based on the most emotionally/hedonically intense moment, and its end.

Contagion: If something has been “contaminated” or viewed as bad by others, I should also avoid it – but if something has been in contact with/endorsed by someone I consider “good”, I should seek it out.

In our case, the “decision” being made is whether or not to trust your website – so manipulating existing heuristics like social proof can help you win trust quickly… or ruin you from the beginning.

There’s a huge list of heuristics and examples to be found over at Learnist; you’ll learn a lot about how you and others jump to conclusions (for better or worse). I’d also be remiss for not recognizing how much Lorelle VanFossen’s work contributed to this piece.

And now, time for the most actionable stuff:

The big, juicy list of trust signals.

Visual Design

• Strong design – Studies prove it: We’re all pretty judgmental about appearances – even with websites. For example, what springs to mind when you see this?

Probably not “quality, timely information I can depend on”, right?

A study by Dr. Brent Coker of the University of Melbourne found that our “offline behavior and inclinations translate to our online existence” when it comes to trust, and that aesthetically pleasing websites, much like aesthetically pleasing people, are more likely to be trusted.

Across three years of research and over 5,500 users in studies of various types, Stanford University researcher and Ph.D. BJ Fogg found that:

“People quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. When designing your site, pay attention to layout, typography, images, consistency issues and more. […] The visual design should match the site’s purpose.”

Finally, researchers Karimov et. al analyzed 14 years of empirical literature, finding

“[…] the literature provides sound empirical support for our general hypothesis that web design cues effectively enhance consumers’ initial trust towards unfamiliar online vendors.”

• Ad layout – Though web users have grown used to ever-present advertising and now expect it on some sites (news websites, etc.), this expectation isn’t carried into corporate websites. No matter what the scenario, BJ Fogg found that a failure to distinguish ads from regular content (callout boxes, color cues, physical separation) was an inhibitor of trust, effectively saying “we don’t really mind how annoying this experience for you is”. For example, while it’s not a corporate site, VidBux comes peppered with invasive ads, popovers and deceptive formatting designed to steal your click. Visitors will accept this mistreatment in exchange for a free movie, but would never let this fly on a website in a niche with more professional expectations.

• Whitespace/clutter - Multiple studies show that the ease of interacting with your website impacts trust; and this study found that whitespace is directly tied to readability; readability in turn impacts perceptions of trustworthiness. This is confirmed by Sillence et. al, who found that complex, busy layouts inhibited trust. Another study from Southhampton University confirms that coherent, simple layouts (including navigation and design).
• Consistency – If differing sections of your website look drastically different from one another (navigational elements move, logos disappear, fonts change, overall design changes), it creates a disjunctive experience that introduces questioning and doubt, destroying trust in the process. While layout changes are inevitable and often required, key elements like color schemes, fonts and the placement of critical items should never change.
• Stock images of people – One of the heuristics that web users have adopted is that stock imagery = cheap and impersonal. You cannot simultaneously make claims about your brand’s high level of service and personal attention and then use recycled imagery of people you’ve never met; it creates a dissonance that tells the consumer you are lying.

Conversely, Aldiri et. al (2008) found that having a facial photo of a real representative was a strong indicator of trust, and Riegelsberger et. al (2003) found the same to be true of employee photos.

For example…

Look at these two plumbers' websites. One uses clipart and stock photos:

The other shows the plumbing team front and center (along with a slicker design and an “Angie’s List” award for service):

When hiring a plumber, which one would you consider first? Likely the one where you’ve seen the team’s photo; you know they’re real people and take some small comfort in having an idea of what they look like. As another example, look at the generic “team” shown on this website for an SEO firm:

None of those people work there. Now check out SingleGrain:

Who are you more likely to call – the guys with names and photos? Or the white folks huddled around a monitor?

• Dated visuals – This one is harder to pin down because expectations differ between contexts. Nobody will fault a university website for looking dated, nor do we trust Wikipedia less for its simplistic design. That said, especially for corporate websites, web users have developed a heuristic that old content is less relevant and thus less trustworthy; that outdated design is a hallmark of neglect. The same applies to design. Obvious signs of age (tables, animated gifs, intro pages, dated graphics, blinking/scrolling text) show visitors that you care little about how you will be perceived (just ask Rand).One huge caveat: If you sell to budget-buyers, looking too slick can actually drop your conversion rates. Remember the expectations of your specific customer; if they come looking for cheap shoes, don’t present yourself like a luxury brand.
• Typography – Small and difficult to read print will inhibit usability and hurt trust – but that’s not all there is to it. In this brilliant study, Errol Morris tested the idea of whether or not certain fonts make the sentences written in those fonts more believable. He asked over 45,000 people whether or not they agreed with a statement, varying only the font used to print the statement.

• The findings

indicate that different fonts have different “personalities”, and that some can look more authoritative and professional while others look silly or childish, impacting our ability to believe the message they convey (we’ve all got a “Comic Sans” heuristic by now – just try not to judge “Uglytub.com” by its horrific header.. among… well, everything else.)

• Well-chosen typography reinforces expectations of quality & trustworthiness and improves the likelihood that your information will be accepted. Poorly-chosen typography (again, based on the context of your website and what users expect to see) creates a dissonance between the quality of your presentation and the trustworthiness of your content. One need only look at this set of photos from

Back40Design to understand:

• BJ Fogg’s Maxim – Perhaps all of what I’ve shared can be summed up by BJ Fogg’s Maxim for Credible Design: "To increase the credibility impact of a website, find what elements your target audience interprets most favorably and make those elements most prominent."

Website Architecture & Informational Design

• Ease of Use & Navigation – Study after study after study confirms that ease of use is among the highest contributing factors to trust. Some points on this:
  • Ease of navigating to the information we need is expected to be a streamlined and simple process, regardless of niche or medium. Appeal to the heuristic of familiarity when it comes to designing your navigation – don’t get creative with labels or layouts.
  • This presents a tremendous case for platform-native sites (“mobile friendly”) as improving usability eliminates the opportunities for distrust (Example: being unable to load a flash site, the old “pinch and pull” browsing method, being unable to access areas of the site due to faulty design, etc.)
  • This also presents a strong case for simplicity, avoiding the paralysis that comes with giving visitors too many options or information overload.
  • Site search can be a signal of trust – but only if it actually works. Don’t present this option if you cannot back it up with razor-sharp effectiveness.
• Example: High Noon Holsters breaks every convention in the book – and not in a good way. A bizarre side-nav with WAY too many options leaves visitors feeling overwhelmed from the very start, and wondering why the company hasn’t gotten with the times.
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• Load time – It’s an indirect trust signal, but an important one: Sites that load slowly are lumped in with the same category as sites that are outdated or difficult to use.

• Broken links – Dead links are like a garden that hasn’t been weeded – they show neglect and a lack of care in the integrity of your content. If you can’t be bothered to remove them, your visitors will begin to wonder if your content is current and reliable, both questions that pick at trust.

• Form design – Are your forms asking for too much information? Especially in the early stages, visitors will be extremely protective of their contact information as they expect you will spam them (as proven by a study of the Baymard Institute). If you don’t need a customer’s address, don’t ask for it; take only what you need or risk looking like the overly-nosey neighbor (who nobody trusts).

• Dead space – During an initial design, brands often get exciting about having a “news” section or a “recent updates” section. But when these timely sections sit empty or outdated, they occupy “dead space” that causes a customer to question the commitment of the company to remaining current.

• Pop-Overs & Autoplay – I’ve lumped these together because they both destroy trust for the same reason: They interrupt the user’s experience and force them to surrender control over how they interact. The minute you take navigational choice out of a visitor’s hands, you’ve caused them pause. While sometimes, pop-ups can be effective (there must be a reason Neil Patel loves them so much), err on the side of caution. Don’t ask for surveys before people have used the site, and don’t let media play without the consent of your user.
• Voice & tone –Use the language of your customers and communicate conversationally, free of jargon or language they do not immediate understand. Address the customer directly with “you”; avoid going on a “we” monologue. Your goal is to build empathy and familiarity. Consistency here is also important; schizophrenic voices across pages of your website is one problem, but more overlooked is dissonance between your website’s copy and the voices used in advertising) and other marketing materials both on and offline. Be consistent across them all.

Written Content

• Unambiguous messaging – Your messaging should indicate in seconds that your customer has arrived at a site intended for someone just like them, with pain points like theirs and challenges like their own. Be direct; focus on headlines and statements that allow a visitor to self-select. Example: Check out how direct and yet compelling Asana’s headlines and benefit statements are. You can tell right away what they do and who it is for:
• Precise language & claims – Generic claims, like “We’ll save you a lot of money” or “Trusted by many customers” don’t necessarily break trust, but specific claims (“Save up to $X”, “Trusted by over 200,000) is more compelling, and when believable (or cited), do more to build trust as they create an anchor of expected value.

• Formatting – Recalling usability, text that is hard to read breaks trust. If your information is difficult to consume (too small, too smushed together, too verbose), it sends the message that you did not care enough about the end user to format it for their convenience.

• Proofreading – Typos, misused words and grammatical errors send the message that you are not paying attention to detail and trigger a reader to question your competence/ability to perform other tasks, albeit unfairly (we falsely assume that a plumber whose website is full of typos is also bad at plumbing). Customer-facing copy should be flawless on permanent assets like your website.Example: This appeal to experience is completely ruined by two careless typos – worse still, it’s from a printing company, where attention to detail is really important!

• Citations, references and support – Any claims you make that beg proof (e.g. The number one selling X in the country, the best-ranked Y in New Jersey) should be supported with factual documentation.

• Accuracy – Content should be verifiably accurate to present-day information. Stated claims that are factually untrue will obviously instill doubt in the mind of a visitor.
• Depth – Particularly when selling products or explaining intangibles, the depth of the details discussed will impact a visitors’ willingness to trust your content. Details also answer and eliminate questions, which eliminate underlying fears, which makes trust possible.

• Recency – Like outdated design, outdated content is a signal that your site is not being well-maintained. The recency heuristic kicks in, and customers automatically assume your entire brand is out of date and slow to respond – or low on attention to detail.
• Contact information – This is top dog for corporate identity trust signals – a prominently listed and easily accessible address, phone number and listed hours for contact. A photo of your physical location doesn’t hurt either (this can also be pulled from Google Maps). Contact info reinforces the perception of accountability.
• Domain name – The domain name you choose matters, because web users have developed heuristics surrounding top level domains. Which site would you sooner give money to: http://www.joes-plumber3.info? Or http://www.joesplumber.com? Dashes, appended numbers and obscure TLDs have historically been used by spammers and sub-par websites; it will be interesting to see how this changes now that the floodgates have opened for different TLDs.
• Credible logo – A well-designed logo is a communicator of credibility; it is the “face” and identity of your brand. It will be assumed by visitors that the time, attention and budget put into your logo will reflect that put into your product, service or information. Logos that appear cheap, amateur or ubiquitous (rip-offs of others) will cost you trust.
• Staff profiles – Another way to humanize the brand is to show the people behind it using complete profiles that feature photos, credentials and human elements like personal interests. Again, this is about showing that there are humans who care standing behind the website. Here’s a personal example: In the website reviews niche, sites are usually dummy sites run by faceless affiliates – people don’t tend to trust them. To help build confidence in my content and to show readers that there’s a person behind the site with interests like theirs, I added an "About Me" page to Power Moves, complete with a headshot:
  
• Client lists – Showcasing who you’ve done work for not only creates accountability, but also allows you to mooch the reputations of your most noteworthy clients and appeals to the heuristics of contagion, authority and social proof. Link to relevant case studies if you have them, to confirm to the visitor that yes, you’ve actually done work for the people you claim to. Example: Lyonsdown, a special interest report publisher, clearly shows the prestigious clientele they’ve worked for to bolster their own reputation:

Corporate Identity/1^st Party Verification

• Appeal to customers served – We’ve all seen McDonald’s “Over a billion served” sign. If you’ve done a large volume of work or serve a large customer base, citing this statistic can instill trust and breed comfort that if so many others use you, it must be safe to do so.
• Appeal to experience – In some industries, experience matters a great deal. If you’ve been in the business for 50 years, that legacy helps establish that you aren’t a fly-by-night operation and may be worth mentioning. Example: The Kane Mostyn Agency plays off of their 25 years in the industry as one of their key selling points:

• Free trials/demos – Giving visitors the option to try you out at no risk is one way to appeal to trust – though this makes sense for a narrow slice of the market. For example, time-tracking software vendor Harvest allows potential customers to try their product for free, giving them a chance to see for themselves whether or not it’s a fit:
• Free resources/insights – Whether it’s free eBooks, a corporate blog or any other format of free resource, consumers will appreciate the opportunity to evaluate your competence and ability. This is also a place to humanize the brand and express a likable corporate personality.

• Guarantees – Offering a money-back guarantee or product warranty removes risk from the situation for a prospective client and helps to instill trust in the fact that you stand behind your offering.
• Policies & conditions – A privacy policy is a must for any website, demonstrating that a user’s information will be protected. Terms and Conditions bring with them an heir of legitimacy, while other policies, like return and refund policies, should be made clear and easy to find to demonstrate a transparency that doesn’t invite doubt.

Social Proof/3rd Party Verification

• Reviews – Whether you’re selling products or offering a service, incorporating reviews is critical. We’ve all probably read that 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family over advertising, and another 72% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Further, those presented with reviews are 7.3 times more likely to share the site – an indicator of trust.
  Some helpful guidelines:
  • Research has shown an increase in website conversion rates when visitors see a live feed of reviews instead of static testimonials.
  • If possible, showcase the most positive and negative reviews for a product side-by-side (or in a way easy to configure); this demonstrates transparency and rather than work against you, actually indicates you will disclose your biases; helpful in building trust.
  • Taking an example from Amazon (though I’ve seen this used on corporate websites too):
  • 
  • This layout allows a customer to quickly see the ying and yang and removes questions surrounding whether or not your business has something to hide.
  • Choose a review platform that allows for customer photos, locations and other personal information to be displayed to reinforce authenticity.
  • Don’t delete negative reviews; reviews that look doctored will be sniffed out as a violation of trust.
  • Here’s an example of a shady vendor using manipulative tactics and getting reviews wrong: Web Hosting Hub shows 25 purely positive reviews – and not a single bad review for their own product. A discerning customer will certainly find this off-putting.
  • 

• Comparisons –Whether it’s you who has done the comparing or a third party, sharing unbiased comparisons between yourself and a competitor is one way to establish trust and simultaneously cut down the lead’s research time (a convenience they may reward).
• Testimonials – Testimonials are good – but not all are created equal. If you’re going to share testimonials, keep these criteria in mind:
  • Choose testimonials that support the claims you have most recently made on the page. For example, if your header appeals to ease of use, choose testimonials that mirror this benefit.
  • Attach photos, full names and relevant credentials to testimonials – anything to prove that it is not only a real person, but someone worth listening to
  • Choose testimonials from people who reflect your desired customer.
  • Don’t discount unscripted video testimonials. Though tougher to acquire, these can be very persuasive (photos can be stolen, but presence in a video is harder to fake).
• Here’s a great example of testimonials done well: Siteslinger.com shares the photo, title and Twitter handle of the person leaving the testimonial, leaving no question as to whether or not they’re a real person.
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• Social metrics – Got a huge social following? Use it to appeal to heuristics surrounding social proof. Small positioning statements like “Join our over 200,000 followers”, or even just visual representations (like Facebook and Twitter Widgets) of your current follower count fans, retweets and shares can help to establish that there is a large contingency of people interested in your work (who presumably already trust you).
• As Seen On/Press Mentions – If you’ve been featured in prominent press, it makes sense to showcase authoritative publications who have featured your work. Unfortunately, these lists have become widely abused by affiliate scammers. This presents an opportunity for you to go one step further and actually link out to the coverage you’ve received, eliminating questions surrounding the authenticity of the press.
• Affiliations – Have a reputable partner? Endorsed by a prominent group? It’s worth pointing this out, as relatively unknown brands and websites can leech off the reputations of other, more established players. Again, the key here is to clarify the relationship. Don’t just show a logo; provide cited proof of your relationship.
• Accreditations & Awards – If your business or brand has been accredited by major bodies like the BBB or are members of trustworthy organizations, share them. You can also showcase awards you’ve received for outstanding contributions in your field - but be careful with these.If an award is unknown or not prestigious (for example, “Best Blog Award from Carl’s Blog Directory), showcasing these obscure and meaningless achievements can actually work against you as the visitor feels like you’re making an obvious play for their trust with a weak hand.And, like all other forms of social proof, provide some evidence that you’ve actually won this award (A link to a third party site is one great way).
• Security seals – If you’re asking a customer to make a purchase, your site has to prove it is trustworthy enough to handle financial transactions – a scary proposition for many customers. In conjunction with recognized payment platforms, security seals are one way to demonstrate your site can be trusted. AS for where you should add this info – appeal to Fogg’s maxim shared earlier. If security is hugely important and you have no reputation to fall back on, this might need to be prominently displayed close to where you’re asking for the financial transaction (CTAs, buttons, etc.) Similar to awards, exercise caution here. Having 18 different “trust” seals may actually look more spammy (C’MON! TRUST US! PLEASE!) – you’re likely best to limit yourself to just 3 – 5 of the most recognized trust badges for your industry.

Wrapping Up: The Three Core Tenants of Trust

As you read through the list above, I’d encourage you to keep what I think are the three core tenants of trust in mind:

1. Are you credible? (Social proof, validity/citation of claims, recency of information, appeals to credentials and experience)
2. Are you transparent? (Authentic photographs, readily available contact information, disclosure of biases, truth in advertising and communication)
3. Is your site easy to use? (Ease of navigation, load speed, adherence to expected conventions)

Every one of those signals ties nicely into one of those tenants, giving you a framework of questions to ask for your specific scenario.

When you can answer all three questions in the affirmative, chances are good you’ve built a site that visitors won’t be leery of.

Never forget – online, you are the other baboon. Treat customer trust carefully. It’s difficult to earn, easy to lose, and near impossible to get back.