How to use your website to increase brand trust and loyalty.
This week, my CXL Digital psychology and Persuasion lesson focused on tricks you could use to gain trust on your site asides the usual design and colour scheme.
Let’s talk about what brand loyalty means to you?
What brands or products are you loyal to the extent that if a competitor offered lower price, threw more incentives your way or even offered their product to you for free, you still wouldn’t think of or consider leaving them? For me, it’s the brand I buy skincare from. I’ve been using her products for up to four years now and I don’t have any complaints whatsoever.
Why? Because her products are not only amazing for my skin, she also has excellent customer service, her products and pricing are easy to understand and I find that she goes out of her way to make sure I’m satisfied with her service. Plus, now and again, she adds a little extra as a surprise to my delivery. But this only applies to products. If you’re a service company, how do you use your site to communicate trust to people who just land on your site? Well enough that they then become loyal to your business?
Trust is a very important factor for your customers, before people do anything that involves them giving you their credit card details or even physical cash, you must have proved to them that you can and have experience in keeping it safe. It’s not something that you can slap in a few reviews from your customers. Trust is hard-earned over time and is lost much more easily than it’s found.
This week, I learnt about the different stages of trust your users go through as they form and build a bond with your brand as well as how you can know which stage a user is at so you can appropriately match your “ask” to their level of trust in your website.
The Pyramid or trust
The pyramid of trust is sort of like maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it explains the stages your customers must go through before they’ll completely trust you enough with their most values piece of information which’s When visitors arrive on your site for the first time, there’s no trust, then when they sense you’re credible enough, then that you’re better than your competitors. They would trust you enough with their personal info, and if you’ve shown enough responsibility with this, providing valuable information, the next stage is financial info, then the highest level is to trust you with their information.
How Build credibility with BJ Fogg’s web credibility factors:
Appropriate design which is related to what you’re doing, if your website uses a dark colour scheme but you’re selling insurance: hope, visitors might be put off by your message or product because your design communicates something entirely different from your product.
Any information you are presenting must be verifiable and true enough, when you make claims, add links that help people know you’re telling the truth.
Show authenticity and realness in your web design, show a real office location
Proof your expertise with certificates, achievements or years of experience, people trust you a lot more when they can see proof that you’re an expert in what you’re saying and selling.
Show that there are real humans on your site, using a bit of personalities, a personal background.
Be easy to contact by providing multiple ways of contact.
Make the site easy to use, difficult user experience is not just a real turn off for users, it also tells them you don’t prioritize them well enough.
Ensure that you make content updates and general information on your site, you wouldn’t buy a headsite from a site whose last blog post was 2010 would you?
Limit ad promotions on your site it makes your site content unreadable and generally clumsy, people do not like or trust clumsy, they trust neat!
Avoid any kind of error in your web copies or even web design, it makes your site seem unprofessional and fake.
Add reviews to your site. Use both good and bad reviews so people will make the real choice to choose your product, they should be honest, detailed and many.
Do people care about your domain name? Probably, this research talks about how people associate credibility with a domain name.
Use videos, photos and animations, show people using the product, demonstrating its features and use cases, it shows that you’re knowledgeable. Simply stating that you can be trusted increases your customers or prospects’ trust in your product.
Socialising, the ultimatum game: if you want to increase trust, socialise first
Symbols that make visitors trust you more;
People will not share sensitive information online unless they feel safe doing it. One of the most popular and predominant ways to convey a secure website is through the implementation of trust badges (also referred to as “trust logos” and “site seals”).
How to build trust and customer loyalty
Great customer service; This is undisputable and absolutely necessary if you want to stay ahead of new and old competitors.
Rewards programs don’t actually build loyalty alone, rewards reinforce behaviours, but that alone wouldn’t make your customers choose just you or your business even when competitors offering better show up. You need a mix of both to stand out. They’re best used as an incentive.
Types of rewards:
Fixed reward: happens when a milestone or behaviour occurs.
Variable rewards: random and surprising, they have to be desirable and achievable, everyone must be able to reach it. The closer they get to reaching the rewards, the faster they consume the product
How to boost motivation in reward program:
Show progress: remind people how close or far they are to claiming their rewards.
Increase motivation by showing them free points or progress, 5 points is better than zero.
Be fair with the rules: perceptual fairness
Include a progress bar to show people just how far they’re getting
Use the George Bailey effect to create FOMO or a reflection on what could have been. Show people what their lives would be like or their alternatives would be if they didn’t have your product or service, which will make them more loyal to you.
You can make your product become a habit by using a lot of external triggers, an invitation, an email that tells them what to do. When they take an action and get a reward directly or indirectly. Using these products stores these values for them because they’ve invested their time and money into it
In summary, Everything can change, but the human brain can’t. Try to understand your customer’s brain to know how it actually works.
