Robert Brecht’s Blog

Website Quality In  Generating Initial Trust

Today’s post deals with the role of website quality on establishing initial trust in the mind of the visitor to the website. As previously stated in the two previous blogs on this subject, we are assuming that the visitor has no first hand knowledge or experience with the organization that has the website.  My first post in this series with developing trust dealt with the role of perceived risk in that process and how you can minimize the perception of risk. You can find Part One here. The second post in this series deals with the role of reputation and specific strategies we can employ to build our reputation in the eyes of the potential consumer of our products and services. You can find Part Two here.

It should be no surprise that the quality of a website impacts the trust of the Internet visitor to it. After all, aren’t we affected by what we see when we visit a “bricks and mortar” business outlet?  Our course we are.  If we are going to buy stock, would we have greater trust in a brokerage business located in a nice facility with nice furniture staffed by professional looking employees who are conversant and readily share evidence of their success as opposed to a stock broker located in a run down building in a strip center with garish furniture and employees in torn shorts and T shirts who are illiterate and say “trust me?” (Wow…did I really write a sentence that long? So much for the usability factor for this post)

A website is a place we conduct business. For many organizations, it is the only place they conduct business. It is logical to assume that part of the process of initial trust development is the quality of the place we do business. Research bears that out.

(I would like to digress a moment to say, that all of the information in my blog is either based on objective research, my own experience or the experience of other highly recognized marketing professionals. I have made a purposeful decision to leave out research citations from my posts. If  you would like me to provide that information, I would be happy to do it. )

Lets discuss what the research says about perceived site quality  in establishing initial perceived trust. You notice I use “perceived” a lot because “perception is reality” in the mind of the visitor. It is also important to remember that what you and I perceive may be different from what you target customer perceives. I discussed this in more detail in a previous post on customer insight. My point is that the perception of quality is in the eyes of the visitor and nor in the mind of your website designer. That is why I advocate the involvement of target market consumers in the website development process and testing much of what we do.

What Do You See…a Duck or Bunny?

Never…Never believe that your customer thinks like you!

The quality of a website is important. Consumers make inferences regarding the business behind the website based on their initial impressions and experiences with it. There is data to support that, as consumers become increasingly more comfortable with the Internet as a medium for commerce, that the importance of website quality is increasing vis-a-vis the other trust engendering factors. Website developers should devote increased attention to just how well they design and build a site based on what we have learned regarding the importance of the perception of quality has on the overall perception of the business and whether to trust it with an online transaction.

Developing a quality website: Remember that initial impressions of website take place at the emotional level as does much of the purchasing decision process. A quality website in the minds of the visitor will be one designed specifically for them at several levels. They include:

• Graphic Design
• Structural Design
• Content Design
• User Experience Design

It is not the intent of this particular blog to provide the detailed discussion of design elements that create the perception of quality, but, instead to address them in general and provide illustrative examples.

Graphic Design: There  are a lot of good resources on creating a quality website from a graphic design perspective. Many of them are based on proven graphic design principles. I would only argue that designers and developers do a couple of more things as part of their efforts: 1. Understand the profile of the target market and their psychographics and design for them. 2. Understand the business purpose of the website and design for it. 3. Understand what the marketing field has learned about color psychology, eye path, graphics, etc and incorporate that information into the design of a quality website.

Structural Design: We regard structural design as the overall organization and accessibility of information on a website. Designing and testing for usability addresses the structural design elements. Examples of good structural design include  intuitive and consistent navigation, copy consistent with audience reading levels, site loading quickly, etc.  Good structural design is an essential element of the perception of a quality website in the minds of visitors.

Content Design: Content is the informational components of our website. It is the Persuasive Components that will, if done right, increase the likelihood that visitors will take the action we would like them to take. Examples of content design elements include the use of branding elements such as a logo and Value Proposition, good persuasive copy with headlines and subheads, bullet points, testimonials, calls to action, etc. In fact, the content and design process should be done after we have the visitor profiles and site objectives…well before the graphic design process addressed above.

User Experience Design: This factor addresses  the personalization of the website experience. It has only been recently that the personalization of Internet marketing efforts has been shown to be an increasingly important factor in getting conversion, i.e. getting people to take our most favored actions.  Examples of ways we personalize the user experience include, use of photographs or video to personalize the business and its representatives; providing a different website experiences by segmenting the visitor based on previous visits, geographic location, site content interactions, etc; and use of synchronous communications media, e.g.,  instant messaging, click to call, etc. The more we tailor the website experience to a particular visitor the higher the quality of website that will be perceived on the part of that visitor.

Amateurish websites do not engender the kind of trust needed for a consumer to take action on it, unless the visitor is extremely motivated. We know that highly motivated people will put up with bad websites and still take action. So, if you have the world’s greatest product or service that fills a huge need and you have no competition, then you can ignore much of what I have written about the importance of creating initial trust for website visitors.

If you are like the rest of us, take the time to address perceived risk, reputation and site quality as you develop your website.

Your comments are appreciated. What other ways can we build trust in visitors with no experience with us?

Tags: Brand + Technology, Internet Marketing, Non Linear Internet Marketing, Online Marketing, Website Design

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Internet Marketing, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.