Design is the first thing that catches the eye of your future customers; it communicates your brand’s personality. When done right, it becomes one of your strongest marketing assets filling in all the blanks where your campaign might have lacked. A design done right sets you apart from your competitors and creates long-lasting emotional connections with your consumers. In today’s article, our web design agency here in Chicago walks you through the best ways to build trust with customers through web design.
Table of Contents:
- Why is it important to build trust with your customers?
- How to build trust with your customers?
- Using design to build trust with your customers
- Emphasize security and transparency
Why is it important to build trust with your customers?
Today’s market is highly competitive and consumer-driven. Your potential customer is presented with an abundance of branded options for every choice they’re about to make. While one-time customers are valuable and undoubtedly bring profit, recurring customers will push your business to the next level. These are hard to obtain for unknown brands no matter how magnificent their product may be. Their only chance to level the playing field is to constantly strive to build trust with customers. Here are some of the benefits that will build consumers’ trust in your business:
- Trust drives conversions – For companies running an online business with no means to directly communicate with consumers, earning and sustaining the trust of potential, as well as existing customers is crucial. It is the main factor in converting website visitors into leads and leads into customers.
- Increased retention – Gaining the trust of your existing customers is the most important step in building strong relationships. Once you manage to bring that relationship to an emotional level, your customers will keep coming back for more products. Besides the obvious benefit mirrored through profit, nurturing existing customers also saves your company’s budget as it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.
- Improved loyalty – Trust boosts loyalty and transforms your customers into spokesmen that spread the word about your brand and establish it as an industry authority. With such an army of devoted advocates, your popularity will increase exponentially attracting more customers thus skyrocketing your revenue.
How to build trust with your customers?
Content marketing and search engine optimization are two of the most important aspects of building customer trust. Engaging, accurate, and optimized content bolsters your reputation and authority leading to increased trust in your business. However, it is just as important to present your content in a professional-looking and aesthetically pleasing way to your website visitors. Whether it’s a blog post or a product description, you need to put a bow on it. In other words, you need to create the right design choices in order to connect with your customers on a more emotional level.
The Aesthetic-Usability effect
The Aesthetic-Usability effect is a term first used by the Nielsen Norman Group. Their research showed that aesthetically pleasing things are perceived as more valuable and easier to use. Now, let’s put this in the context of your site. Beautiful things generate positive emotions and your viewers are more likely to tolerate minor usability issues if they find an interface visually pleasing. This is why companies that have invested in good web design find it easier to build trust with customers. Eye-catching design grabs visitor’s attention and makes the website, as well as the brand itself, look valuable and trustworthy.
Using design to build trust with customers
Though people say “don’t judge a book by its cover”, this type of assessment has deep roots in human nature. A good design includes so many elements such as color, fonts, and imagery, not to mention numerous behind-the-scenes tweaks that mobile-first web design requires. Just how do you find that golden ratio that instills trust? Well, here is how:
Lean towards existing trends to boost credibility
We are not advising you to follow every web design fad that is released. That would be tiresome and would repel your visitors rather than establish your website as stable and trustworthy. One of the crucial elements of trust-focused web design is conforming to modern design standards. If visitors perceive your design as outdated, they will probably think that there is much more hiding beneath the surface. They might figure that your product is outdated too or that your company is in a downward spiral. Making your website modern-looking shows that you care. When your design choices communicate that your business is in full swing, it becomes easier to appeal to your customers and build that rapport.
Focus on design consistency
Keeping the design elements consistent throughout your website is very important if you wish to build trust with your customers. Imagine a website that changes its layout or a color scheme every time you switch to a new page. By adding something as simple as font inconsistencies and you can easily say that there is a circus in town. This can negate your visitors’ trust in a major way. A uniform look represents an uninterrupted stream of thoughts and shows the people behind the company are genuine and care about the well-being of their customers. And that’s exactly the message you want your website to communicate.
Design consistency is best achieved through regular consistency audit. Every point of interaction between your website and visitors needs to be consistent in design, features, functionalities, labels, tone, and branding. If you entertain third-party elements, making them look native will provide a seamless experience.
Emphasize security and transparency
Another way to build trust with customers is to design a layout that puts transparency and security at the forefront. There are a couple of ways to do this:
- If you have an E-commerce website, design a page layout that draws visitors’ attention to your security policies
- Many enterprise companies have found success in building trust with customers through cleverly designed team and contact info. pages. This gives a company a human face that visitors can relate to
- Use design elements to highlight page sections where you provide elaborate explanations of how you protect your customer data
- Use simple terms and common language when you write about your products and services. Maximizing legibility in this way shows your future customers that you are not hiding any important information
Remove visual clutter
A user-friendly website design breathes trust to visitors. To make your website more user-friendly, make sure to remove all visual interferences that clutter your pages such as unnecessary animations, pop-ups, and ads.
We understand the business side of it, so we are not suggesting that your website shouldnt contain pop-ups and ads at all. We’re just advising you not to overdo it. By increasing white space, you can effectively direct your visitors where you want them to go; let’s say to your CTA button.
By keeping the visual noise to a minimum you will provide a better user experience.
Final thoughts
If you browse through our blog pages you will find multiple reasons to invest in web design. However, one of the most often overlooked reasons is that well-designed web pages can incite customer trust and help you establish long and meaningful relationships with your clients. Though building trust through web design is an investment, it’s the one that pays dividends in the long haul. A beautifully designed website with engaging content is like a well-oiled conversion machine. Design with your customers in mind. If you give them enough reasons to trust your company, they will have no reason to switch to your competitors.
