Diego Velasquez
With frequent news stories of hacked sites and data breaches, it’s understandable that 73% of consumers are worried about sharing their personal and financial information for fear of it being stolen (Experian 2018). Furthermore, a recent Baymard (2020) report showed that 18% of cart abandons happen because a customer does not trust a website.
The bottom-line: no one will buy from you if they do not trust your website.
The ability to establish trust from the beginning and maintain it until the end of the buyer’s journey is of paramount importance, so let’s take a closer look at how you can inspire trust in your site visitors from both a technical approach and a human-centric approach.
Build Trust by Encrypting Your Website
Web browsers are the mechanism to allow users to view and engage with websites and they are in a unique position to help site visitors know if a website is safe for browsing or not. How are browsers able to do this? With a website’s SSL certificate.
SSL certificates are an essential component to your website and are used by browsers to authenticate your website’s ownership, in addition to encrypting data exchanged between the visitor and your web servers. It’s important that you optimize your SSL implementation so that your website is trusted by the web browsers and subsequently, your site visitors:
- Make sure you have an SSL certificate installed. If you don’t yet have an SSL certificate for your website by now, you need to get one immediately, otherwise, the browsers display a red “Not secure” warning to your site visitors — which is the last thing you would want if you’re trying to build trust. Once you have SSL installed, keep in mind that the browser’s negative display indicators can still be triggered if the “HTTPS” protocol is not being forced (How to fix) or also if your site has “Mixed Content” (How to fix) — so make sure those aspects are working properly.
- Consider upgrading to a premium SSL certificate for higher authentication and malware scanning services. While Domain Validated (DV) SSL certificates provide domain authentication and data encryption, they provide the lowest level of authentication for visitors. Premium SSL certificates, such as Organization Validated (OV) and Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates, ensure that a website organization’s physical address has been validated by a human. In addition, many of these premium certificates also come with malware scanning — a tool for proactively scanning your website for vulnerabilities so you can detect and fix small issues before they become big problems.
EV SSL certificates — the highest authentication attainable — enable a visitor to see the “Issued to” Company information with one-click from the browser. The more a visitor is assured they are dealing with a real entity, the higher the trust they’ll have.
Build Trust by Adding Human-Centric Elements on Your Website
While you may not be a big brand like Amazon or Canadian Tire, you can still inspire trust and credibility with your visitors by leveraging established symbols, badges, and testimonials.
- Install and display a Site Seal. In addition to the above-mentioned benefits of SSL certificates, many come with trust-building and conversion-boosting site seals. If you purchased your SSL certificate from a major Certificate Authority, be sure you have installed the included site seal properly and it is displaying for your customers. Site seals have proven to be effective as consumers recognize them and understand the 3rd-party vetting process to acquire them (Baymard 2020).
- Not surprisingly, conversions can be increased when your site seals are prominently placed on the ecommerce checkout page or on the landing pages where personal information is requested. According to a test by Conversion Fanatics (2017), they experienced a 71.1% increase in revenue per visitor by adding a trust-badge to their checkout page.
- Not surprisingly, conversions can be increased when your site seals are prominently placed on the ecommerce checkout page or on the landing pages where personal information is requested. According to a test by Conversion Fanatics (2017), they experienced a 71.1% increase in revenue per visitor by adding a trust-badge to their checkout page.
- Display trust marks from independent, third-party agencies, organizations, and associations. Has your business undergone external vetting, or met the rigorous security and privacy requirements of an external organization? Are your services accredited by an independent authority or registry? Does your business maintain an excellent BBB rating? If so, showing these marks and logos provides valuable external proof of your organization’s reputability and values.
- Showcase accolades or publication mentions. Has your company won any prizes from any industry groups? Was your website featured in any media outlets? If so, posting these publication logos with a short description can be a great credibility builder to share on your important pages.
- Collect and showcase user-generated content. Whether it’s in the form of testimonials or photos of product usage, your previous customers are most likely already raving about your brand if your products and support are great. Encourage your customers to share their experiences and product reviews publicly. Soon you will have a library of powerful endorsements to showcase for new site visitors to read and therefore, feel more comfortable shopping from your site.
On your journey to becoming a bigger, more well-known brand, thankfully there are simple and effective ways to inspire immediate trust in your site visitors — to ultimately give you, better sales.
Diego Velasquez is a Channel Marketing Manager for The SSL Store, and an expert in SSL security.