Tips to build trust and credibility with your customers via your website

Once upon a time, just having a website was enough to give a business credibility. Nowadays, with so many websites of varying quality on the internet, your website has to work a little harder to build trust with visitors. We've listed a few elements below that will ensure your glass business is perceived as credible and trustworthy by visitors to your website.

Talk like a business

We often see glazing businesses take shortcuts on their website but these time savings could be costing you customers. Here are a few website features you should consider having on your website to demonstrate business credibility:

• An About Us page to put a face to the name
• Contact information, including an address and phone number/s. Just an email address or form may make some people think twice about reaching out to you
• A regularly updated news section or portfolio of recent work
  (Creating a portfolio of work on your glazing website)
• A dedicated testimonials page or testimonials scattered throughout your site
  (Glaziers, are you encouraging your customers to leave reviews?)
• Links to your company's active social media pages — if they're not being actively updated, leave them out

HTTPS is the new HTTP

In short, an HTTPS site is encrypted, protecting the data from hacking, whereas an HTTP site is not. As of mid-2018, Google Chrome lets the user know if the site they are visiting is secured or not by either displaying a padlock (for a secured, HTTPS site) or a red 'Not Secure' tag (for an unsecured, HTTP site) before the URL in the address bar. If you don't upgrade to HTTPS, your site visitor is seeing a literal red flag against you!

For more information on converting your site from HTTP to HTTPS, here's a how-to guide from Elevated.com.

Put your best foot forward

What your website looks like matters. Dated websites give the viewer the impression that the business doesn't care about how they're perceived.

Most importantly, your website must look legitimate. There are a lot of dodgy websites on the internet and web users are becoming more savvy in their browsing habits. Little things like typos, broken links or images, placeholder content, or just plain old bugs on your website may all make the viewer suspicious as to the legitimacy of your business.

You don't have to spend a lot of money to have a professional-looking website. There are plenty of tools to help you create one with little or no tech experience required (check out 3 simple web solutions to get your glazing website up and running for ideas). Once you've created the site, do a thorough proofread and get someone else to check it with a fine-tooth comb to make sure there aren't any bugs or errors that you've missed.

Also worth considering...

• Include a privacy policy on your website if you collect any kind of data (here's a link to ours). Most visitors won't read it in all likelihood, but having one on your website demonstrates credibility. If your target market is in the EU, this is a legal requirement now.
• Purchase a custom domain. If your website uses a free subdomain (for example: glazier.wordpress.com or glazier.wix.com) it automatically raises red flags with the viewer. At the very least it shows an unwillingness to make a small financial investment your business which isn't a good look.
• Display membership badges for any industry organizations you belong to.

We hope you've found simple useful ideas in here to implement on your own website.