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Your website needs trust before you can achieve any other goals. People are naturally sceptical of the web and rely on a set of indicators to analyse the webpages we visit; looking for credibility, value and trust.

All websites need trust. Your website may be made for the love rather than the money, and you might think you don’t need to worry about performance, about conversion rates, about growth.  But your goal should always be to create trust.

Create trust

Being trustworthy is a good start, but it’s not enough in itself.  People have a limited supply of patience when they come to your website and it’s important to identify anything that can become a drain on that supply.

• Be honest. Write clear titles, tell the reader what to expect and then deliver the expectation.
• Be clear. Avoid any misunderstanding and doubt by simplifying your message. 
• Reassure. Signal to your reader where they are and that the page contains what they were expecting.

Techniques for creating trust

Over the next few weeks I will be posting examples showing you exactly how to use images, design and words to build trust.

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Visitor counts and page views do not provide useful information when analysing visitors to your site when not used alongside other details. Statistical reporting needs to involve analysis, not copy & paste.

It’s not that page view counts are not useful. But using only the page views to judge your site performance is a mistake.
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