Trust will always play an important role in the purchase decisions of consumers. The questions are: How reliable are you? Do your prospective customers trust you? What does you track record say about you? And ultimately, does your website engender trust in your leads?

When consumers don’t trust you, good luck selling your product, and it doesn’t matter if the product offered on your site exudes quality. Here is a good example of lack of trust in business.

You are an avid computer user on your morning jogging routine. Then a stranger stops you and offers you a brand new laptop for £50 but only if you can pay immediately. Assuming you inspect the laptop and it’s good, and you also have the money on you, would you buy it?

The truth is that most people wouldn’t buy it, and that’s where trust comes in. This instance is a close depiction of what online store owners do. They set up products for sale and expect consumers to part with their hard-earned cash when these consumers don’t really know anything about who is selling the products.

This is why people would rather buy from big ecommerce sites like Amazon rather than from a small or new e-store.

According to the sales expert, Zig Ziglar, “Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.”

In business, you might not be able to do much concerning the first three. But as you can incite desire for your product, you can also build trust. Do this on your website by using these simple trust elements.

1. Let Consumers Know There’s a Genuine Person or Outfit Behind Your Site

This is among the simplest ways to build trust, and there are four main ways you can achieve this:

List your physical business address on your website.
Display at least two photos of your office. If the photos offer different views of the same place, then better.
List your membership with a governing organisation in your field. For instance, a membership with the chamber of commerce.
Depending on the product or service you offer, you can also display a picture of you and, perhaps, those of top members of your establishment.

2. Make It Easy for Consumers to Confirm the Information on Your Website

You can do this by reinforcing the information on your site using testimonials, citations, or by linking your source material.

This is why relevant outbound links are an essential part of website content. By linking to credible external articles with authority in your topic, you are basically providing evidence of the correctness of your content.

3. Don’t Hesitate to Emphasize the Expertise in Your Company, Content, and Services/Products

If you have experts in your establishment, by all means show them off alongside their qualifications. If you are connected to a renowned body, make sure that’s also visible on your site. The same goes for if your sponsors are authorities in their field.

However, be mindful not to link to, or display your connection with, disreputable websites or organizations. That would only discredit your website.

4. Can Consumers Easily Contact You?

Some people might like to call in or email to verify whom they are doing business with. Therefore, list your contact information on your site. While some other people may not check in, your phone number, email address, and physical address being on your site enhances your website’s credibility.

5. Ensure that Your Website’s Design Is Professional

They say ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, but the issue is that people will always do that. If your website’s design is the cover of your content, product, or service, then ensure that it looks professional.

This means that the design must complement your purpose, and make sure the typography, images, layout, and other aspects don’t look amateur. Otherwise, your website too will be considered amateur, and trusting it would be like trusting a rascal.

6. Regularly Update the Content of Your Website

Regular updates don’t only suggest that your company is still active, but also provide visitors with more useful content with improved quality. Site visitors will assign more trust to your content when they see this.

7. Is Your Website Easy to Use? Also, Is It Useful?

Usefulness and ease of use will boost the credibility of your website. Why? Because people love simplicity and quality—traits that could imply that your site not only has nothing to hide, but is also beneficial to users.

Always remember that you are in business because of consumers. Don’t make your site and thus product or service difficult to access.

8. Display Promotional Content Judiciously

Adverts, popups, blinking banners, hypes—nobody likes them. In fact, they are spammy. If you can’t entirely avoid ads on your website, show them sparingly and clearly tag them as sponsored content.

9. Watch Out for Errors

Whether it’s a typographical error, a mistaken link, or a misquote, errors will make you appear careless and does not echo credibility at all.

Your website is where your leads funnel and are converted to sales. Why not take care to build trust so that you don’t miss the opportunities that those leads brought with them?

What’s the most important aspect of a business?

No doubt, some people might say the product. Some others might say money. And there are even those that might say the manufacturing process.

Granted. These are all important aspects of doing business, but then they would all crumble without people.

People, in this case, means two things:

Your Customers Matter in Business

People Are What Matters Most in Business - Macaulay Gidado

Sam Walton once said, “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” Michael LeBoeuf reinforced that quote by saying that a satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.

The quality of your product, the number of social media followers you have, or the amount of money you spend on your brand means nothing if no one buys what you are selling.

Therefore, every aspect of your business should be focused on two things:

Bringing people (customers) on-board.
Retaining those customers.

To do this:

Your product or service must be something of value to people.
How you balance quality and price should be dependent on what your customers value and how much they are willing to put down for it.
The packaging and features of your product should appeal to the people you are targeting.
Your staff ought to be nice and professional towards your customers. Otherwise, you might end up losing those customers.

Simply put, people should find your product or service affordable, valuable, and satisfying.

Therefore, to run a successful business, you must build your product or service around people. If you are changing a product feature, relocating your office, or partnering with a new marketing agency, the main reason behind such an action should be customer orientated.

Businesses thrive on value. People buy what they value. Focus on people.

The People You Work With

These include you, your staff, your business partners, vendors you outsource tasks to, and so on. As Steve Jobs said, “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”

No single man or woman has all it takes to build and run a business. This is why entrepreneurs:

Seek investors.
Hire staff
Outsource some tasks
Partner with other businesses

The point here is simple. Appreciate people and the value they can bring to your brand. Your employees are involved in most aspects of your business, from production to delivery. They are typically the ones that interact directly with your customers. This is why successful entrepreneurs value people and go to reasonable lengths to keep valuable employees satisfied.

What Does This All Mean?

Humans are not just the ultimate consumers of products and services. They are also the ultimate producers of products and services. A successful business revolves around both the needs of its customers and staff.

Of course, numbers are important. So are technology and efficiency. However, they aren’t as important as people. Focus on people, on meeting their needs and delivering value, and every other aspect of your business will stand firm.

Find out how Macaulay Gidado can help your brand.