The Importance of Building Online Trust

Many of my clients are small business owners who have initially attempted to perform their own internet marketing campaigns. They often rush to put together their web sites without considering the end user. Quite often they even dive into Pay Per Click ad campaigns for these sites and then wonder why things aren’t working as they hoped. Search is moving more and more toward "trust" and trust is being evaluated on much more than just the number of links from authority sites. User experience is an integral part of the mix and an increasingly important one.

I advise anyone in the process of developing a web site to address the issues surrounding the end user, add value to your site with relevant content, predict and address your site visitor’s needs and questions, provide simple and intuitive navigation of your web site, build trust with privacy policies and service agreements. All of these things move beyond issues of page rank and into the realm of building quality web sites, sites worthy of visits. Not surprisingly, the sites which focus on these issues are starting to float to the top of search results pages; in many cases they are even outperforming sites with higher page ranks.

I mentioned Pay Per Click advertising earlier. It should be obvious to everyone how a web site project which has addressed issues of trust, has been designed specifically to help build trust and add value to the online experience will perform better than sites that have not. It is my belief that a lot of money and energy is being thrown out the window by not addressing these issues before a single dime is ever spent on any online advertising costs. Trust or the lack of it, has always been the key issue concerning the conversion rates of sites selling a product or service online.

Before spending money on any kind of online ad campaign, think about how your website builds trust, think about how your web site anticipates user’s questions and needs, think about how your web site guides users to a specific goal and provides value whether they ultimately make a purchase or not. Consider these issues and address them and you will be much more likely to see a return on your online advertising investments.

For over 11 years, internet marketing specialist Jeff Palmer has helped businesses succeed online. To learn how Jeff can help your business develop an effective online marketing strategy, contact Semultra Internet Marketing.