How Web Design Can Build Trust In Your Business
If you thought that web design was purely about making your website look nice, then you are wrong. Instead, it has an impact on every aspect of your business online including branding, the amount of traffic you receive, and SEO. In other words, a bad or poorly executed design can have a catastrophic impact in more ways than you would imagine.
The Building Of Trust Via Design
One of the first points that we need to make is that a well designed website generates a lot of trust in what the site has to offer. This is rather surprising because studies have indicated that over 90% of people that say that they have not trusted a particular website point to the bad or outdated design as being the problem while under 10% only ever refer to the content. In other words, people simply cannot move beyond a badly designed website as their eyes are drawn to it and they pretty much become blind to what the website is saying.
So what kind of things about the design leads to people not trusting the website? First, if the layout is seen as being far too busy or too complex to understand. People see this as being a sign that there is a lack of organization or the people behind it are just running around and losing control.
People also mistrust a website that has a tendency to use small print because their first thought is that they must have something to hide if they are writing things so small that people would simply give up with trying to read it. There are also issues with websites that take too long to load, or have boring colors and a boring design and all of this is decided by the individual within seconds of landing on that website.
Content Does Still Play A Part
However, even though we just stated that the design of a website is very important when it comes to building trust, you still need to understand that content plays a major role. Indeed, around 80% of people state that the quality of the content is important to them, but you still need to get them past that initial step of liking what they see from a visual point of view for them to then be able to make up their mind about what you have to say.
In the same study that looked at how important content was for building trust, it was also noted that there are certain things that people look for in the wording that appears on a website. People appear to love when there is a section covering frequently asked questions. People love content that is informative, easy to understand, and it gets to the point quickly as we do appear to have relatively low attention spans. People also love content that is fresh, and is relevant to the website and what they would expect to see, so clearly this is something that has to be done correctly because if that is not the case, then trust in your site will be lost.
Web Design, SEO, And Building Trust
Finally, it is also a well accepted fact that people tend to trust those websites that appear further up the search engine rankings. They see those websites as having more authority over various keywords even though they do not really understand the complexities of SEO. However, the design of your website can also play a role in your ability to rank higher on those searches and, in turn, it also fits in with your ability to build trust in your website and brand.
There is a tendency for some designers to use crazes when it comes to their designs and even though it may look modern and cool, it can have a negative impact on the way that search engines can find and then crawl through the site. Look at the example where people love just one single page that scrolls on for an eternity. This looks great and people love not having to jump between pages, but from an SEO point of view there is one vital component missing. With no pages to index, the search engines find it harder to pick up the site and you then need some pretty amazing on-page SEO to try to rectify the problem. This can be extremely expensive, so in all honesty you are better off with a design that sticks to the traditional format, but has modern colors, and other cool features that marks it out as being modern. Think about it. Keywords are important when it comes to SEO, but you achieve better results when they are spread throughout a site. Using this one page design means they are all together on just one single page and that is something that should be avoided.
What we are saying is that there are several key factors in building trust in your website and this is an issue that needs to be tackled from the moment that people land on your URL. Your design has to be pleasant and welcoming. Your content has to be relevant. Your SEO has to get you up those rankings. Without them, you will be struggling and let’s face it, nobody wants to struggle, do they?
