9 Ways to Build Brand Credibility Through a Website and Boost Conversions

A website is only as good as its credibility, learn how to build brand credibility to increase trust and conversions in this post.

 

Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash

The modern internet user is well-aware that the web is filled with untrustworthy businesses. While they may fall for the occasional phishing scheme, most people will look for certain trust and credibility signals before they choose to do business with a brand. 

 

What can you do to boost your credibility, and how will these same signals boost your conversion rates? That’s what we’re going to talk about in this post, so read on to learn more. 

Showcase Your Credentials

Nothing will lend you more credibility than your accreditations, awards, and credentials. If a third party has vetted you and declared you competent, your visitors will be much more likely to convert and come back. 

 

Depending on your industry, your credentials may be more or less difficult to demonstrate. For example, the January team is able to boast that their co-founder is the chair of the Genetics Department at Stanford, and they have cleverly highlighted this fact.

Source: january.ai

 

A much smaller brand, AA 24/7, has listed their Gas Safety registration number, which proves to clients that they are genuine experts. 

 

Provide Real Value

Credibility is often a somewhat vague subject, and it can be challenging to prove or dispute. However, the surest (and perhaps more difficult) way to ensure that you are seen as a reliable source of information and a business to be relied on is to provide real value to your visitors and clients at all times. 

 

That means that you have to take exceptional care with the content you provide, the design of your website, and everything else we touch upon in this article. However, this is also the best way to ensure that your rankings go up and that you are trusted.

 

MarketBeat is an excellent example to take a look at. Their entire website is teeming with value — from all the sheets and tables investors can check regularly to the countless news reports that help them make intelligent decisions.

Let Your Clients Speak

Social proof is another simple yet effective way to boost your brand’s credibility and help visitors make transactional decisions. Whether you add reviews, testimonials, and client logos or link out to the news outlets that have mentioned you, you’ll be scoring some major points. 

 

Ideally, you want to combine several different formats of social proof. SellerPlex did it very effectively with their testimonials, for example. They have a written testimonial where they list the credentials of the person. Plus, they also have a short video where their client speaks about their experience with the brand.

Source: sellerplex.com

 

Video testimonials are always a great choice. They are more engaging than text, easy to digest, and able to communicate a lot of information.

Demonstrate Results

If you can, show your customers and clients what kinds of results they can expect to see. Of course, this cannot apply to all industries, and sometimes your results will be completely intangible. But if there is any type of “before and after,” include it. 

 

No matter how well your customer (and you yourself) speak about your brand, the best demonstration of credibility will always be your results. Write case studies and use cases, and include images whenever possible. If not, aim to provide charts or graphs. 

 

Nerd Fitness does it well. Note their “do not guarantee individual success” caveat, which is incredibly important to add. Always make it abundantly clear that just because one client has had a specific result does not mean others can expect the same. 

Source: nerdfitness.com

Show Who’s Behind It

Another great way to demonstrate credibility is to show your visitors who’s behind the website. For example, if your company has created a tool or a product that has its own separate website, you should credit the parent company clearly. 

 

This is especially important for new “child” brands, as they can hugely benefit from all the expertise the main brand has already accrued. You have probably seen tons of “made with love by” notes in website footers. 

 

You can do it better, though. Take a look at Prep Center and their “powered by” section. It helps the website become instantly more credible, as a lot of the brand’s audience will already have heard of the Aura repricer.

Source: prepcenter.com

 

They will thus be much more likely to stick around and see what this new venture has to offer.

Vary Your Blog Content

Content marketing plays a major role in brand credibility, and you already know that you should publish relevant and valuable content on a regular basis. However, there’s more: you also need to vary your content to an extent. 

 

Don’t focus on publishing long-form blog posts alone, even if that’s your best-performing content type. Do some shorter posts, video content, or a roundup post. This will ensure that you grab the attention of various members of your audience and that you cater to the needs of people in various stages of your sales funnel. 

 

Ahrefs does this very well. They have case studies and major informative pieces, response-style blog posts that answer a certain question, and long-form guides, among other content types. 

Have Guests

You should also consider having guest authors on your blog. Particularly, you need industry experts who can add more value to your content and who can speak on topics you are not an expert on. This will help you broaden your reach alongside your credibility, as you will likely attract some of their audience and followers too.

 

To ensure the quality of your guest posts and make the process easier, you can use a guest post WordPress plugin. It will help you ensure that the word count and style criteria are met and allow you to manage all posts from WordPress itself instead of having to use an email client and a sheet.

Show Leads Where They Can Find You

A very simple win you can implement immediately is listing your physical address (or at least an address where you can receive snail mail) on the website.

 

So many businesses are not even legally registered or not willing to share where they do business from. Thus, this simple act will make you easily stand out and boost your credibility. 

 

Take a look at how Brand Glow Up added all the relevant info to their footer. There’s their former brand name, and there’s the address, but they’ve also highlighted the fact that they operate worldwide. That’s incredibly important and super effective.

Source: brandglowup.com

Design It Well

Finally, an incredibly important way to boost your credibility is to have a website that works seamlessly. There’s nothing worse than encountering a bunch of 404 pages, getting lost due to poor navigation, not seeing images as they don’t load properly, and encountering any amount of broken or misplaced elements. 

 

If your website does not work and you’ve failed to fix it (or if it just looks horrible and you do nothing to fix it), your visitors will click off. If you can’t be trusted to keep up with your website, how can you be trusted to do the work you claim you’re good at?

 

What good web design looks like would require thousands of words to explain. Take a look at this article for inspiration on where to get started.  

Wrapping Up 

Credibility is a major contributor to higher conversion rates. Without it, you can’t expect to do nearly as well as you could. The sooner you can implement the methods we’ve talked about in this post, the sooner you will see results.