What are Trust Signals

It’s one thing for people to click your page on SERPs. It’s another to get them to fill out a form, press a button, or purchase something from your page.

 

Even if your page is sitting on top of Google search for your keyword, there’s no guarantee that it will convert visitors to your desired call to action.

 

Therefore, you must practice conversion rate optimization (CRO) to get the most out of your site pages.

 

The goal of CRO is to gain the trust of visitors, thus making it easier to turn them into customers down the line.

 

And to achieve that, you must include trust signals on your page to give them reasons why they should put their trust in your brand.

 

 

What are Trust Signals and Why Do They Matter?

These are page elements or site pages that show how trustworthy a website is.

 

Trust signals serve as social proof, in which people put their faith in you more if other people they like, particularly influencers, recommend your brand.

 

And the more trust people have towards your brand, expect 66% of visitors to purchase from you. While trust signals aim to increase conversions and sales, you must understand how they operate towards this objective.

 

Below are the most crucial ways:

 

Overcome Cognitive Biases

The growing popularity of eCommerce sites presents new challenges that owners must undertake before successfully converting visitors into customers.

 

For example, some people won’t buy from other websites and go out of their way to buy in physical stores. While there’s nothing wrong with this, their cognitive bias against online shopping prevents them from experiencing its benefits.

 

To be fair, almost one-third of cyberattacks are committed on eCommerce sites, so their bias isn’t unfounded.

 

However, this doesn’t mean that all eCommerce stores are bad. Therefore, by utilizing the right trust signals on your eCommerce business, you help them question their biases until they are convinced that buying from you is the right decision.

 

Ensure Their Safety

In the case of people who doubt online shopping safety, you can set up security measures to guarantee that they can order from your site and receive it safely.

 

Of course, visitors won’t know if you have a security system in place unless you inform them.

 

So, by using trust signals like “Norton Secured,” BBB Accredited Business, and others, they now have peace of mind to order from your site.

 

 

 

Different Types of Trust Signals

Trust signals usually come in various forms that are displayed on a page. And due to the many trust signals you can choose to display on your site page, it’s essential to showcase the best one that will improve your conversion rates.

 

Below are the types of trust signals you can use and examples of each to see which ones are the most appropriate for your business.

 

Guarantees

You see guarantee trust signals on eCommerce websites, particularly the “100% Money Back Guarantee.” When people are not happy with a product they purchased, the store will refund them the money within a period, no questions asked.

 

 

Guarantees can come in the form of a trust seal or text as long as customers can see them and the site provides more information about the guarantee.

 

 

The purpose of guarantees is to protect customers from their investment. If the product is not for them and they have no use for it, it only makes sense to ask for a refund.

 

At the same time, people can go out on a limb to buy your product, knowing that they can get their money back if they don’t like it. In most cases, they don’t end up returning the product, which means you can secure more sales this way.

 

A more concrete example comes from Conversion Fanatics, in which they added a 30-day money-back guarantee to one of their client’s pages. The change resulted in a 26% increase in conversion rate.

 

Testimonials

Featuring satisfied customers on the sales page is one of the best ways to convince people to try your brand out.

 

In the example below, skincare and beauty online store Bliss showcases Instagram posts of people showing off the product with them.

 

 

The magic of customer testimonials comes from the fact that the positivity towards your business is from someone who has no stake in your business.

 

People expect you or someone from your company to say glowing things about your products.

 

But when a regular person tells them how good your brand is, expect 72% of people to trust and convert to your brand. At the same time, the volume of online reviews affects not only conversions but also SEO performance.

 

According to Bazaarvoice’s Conversion Index Volume 8, businesses see a sharp increase in conversions during the first few positive reviews they receive.

 

However, starting with the eighth review, brands get to see an increase in organic traffic too.

 

 

Trust by Association

Trust by association comes in different forms. For agencies and service providers, you can showcase the clients who worked with you through the years.

 

 

You can do this by showcasing the logo of each brand on the page, ideally with a testimonial from the person whom you worked with directly.

 

Writers and bloggers can use the “As Featured in” section on the page with logos of the different publications they’ve written for.

 

 

Lastly, If you worked with influencers in your industry, you can tap into your network for feedback about your skills and expertise.

 

 

For your trust signals to bear more weight, you need to associate yourself with reputable companies and figures in your industry.

 

The more popular they are, the more likely people will trust you. But for this to happen, you also have to prove your trustworthiness to these people.

 

For instance, top brands won’t work with you if the quality you provide doesn’t meet their standards.

 

This is where memberships and certifications come into play. With this trust signal type, you must fulfill specific requirements from professional organizations

 

before they confirm your membership. They will then give you trust badges you can display on your site or a page on their site with your business details.

 

An example of this type is Better Business Bureau. By signing up to the site, you can create a page showing your business details, customer testimonials, complaints, and more.

 

 

You can then feature a trust badge to prove that your business is an accredited business of BBB.

 

 

 

Other Trust Signals

Below are various trust signals you can use to improve the perception of your business from your target audience:

 

• SSL certificate – This certification allows you to encrypt data entered into your website by prospects and customers to prevent online threats from stealing their personal information. You can see if the site has SSL certification if there’s a padlock icon beside the site’s URL on the browser. More importantly, 85% of people don’t engage with unprotected websites.

 

• Legal pages – Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions pages help define what the website can do for visitors and vice versa. This allows both parties to help clearly defined roles to prevent them from mismanaging information.

 

• Contact information – A dedicated Contact page with a form they can fill out (or a link to your emails) helps build more confidence towards your brand. You can also use live chat or chatbot widgets so customers can reach out to you instantaneously.

 

• Blog comments – The activity in your comment section is indicative of an engaged audience and community. This allows other people to try and engage with your content in the same or similar manner.

 

• Social media posts – Analyze the sentiment of social media mentions and posts directed towards your brand. Use positive posts by featuring them on your site and use the negative reviews as constructive criticism for improving your business.

 

 

How to Gather Trust Signals

From the list of trust signals above, you should know which ones you must use for your web pages to increase conversion rates. You can find and earn most of them by using the methods below:

 

Join Respected Organizations Awarding Certifications to Members

If your business doesn’t have clients and customers yet, you can feature certificates and accreditations instead to prove your expertise to your audience.

 

For example, if you’re a digital marketer, you want to prove your knowledge in this field by taking up SEMrush’s free courses and exams. You can also take up Grow with Google’s courses about Google Ads.

 

 

These are Free or Paid courses , which will supply you with more information, tactics, and strategies you can implement for clients. At the same time, the certifications you will earn from these courses hold more weight.

 

By finding the right courses that suit your industry, you can increase your trustworthiness and help you attract potential customers and turn them into long-term clients.

 

Ask for Reviews

Most customers won’t leave a review unless you ask them. It’s not because they don’t want to; you simply have to make it easy and painless for them to leave feedback about their purchase.

 

One way of doing it is by using an email platform that lets you automatically send a message to customers after buying a product from your eCommerce site.

 

This also applies to service providers looking to gather feedback from clients.

 

In the email, ask them to visit your Google My Business, Facebook, or Yelp page and leave a review there as a favor.

 

Keep in mind that you can’t incentivize the reviews they will write for you as it compromises the integrity of the feedback.

 

When asking for reviews, don’t limit yourself to just your products and services. There are other aspects in your business that visitors can review like your UX, content, customer support, and others.

 

For example, run quick surveys asking people what they think about your site and if they can find what they’re looking for. You can also use chatbots to converse with visitors for their feedback.

 

Listen to Social Media

Social listening tools allow you to track terms or hashtags relevant to your business and see what people are saying about them. You can then find and feature customer reviews on your page.

 

The great thing about these tools is that they will automatically collect the posts for you from different social media accounts.

 

Just type in the query or hashtag that you want to track and just wait until the search is complete.

 

Most of these listening apps have a sentiment analysis feature that helps you determine whether the post is positive or negative.

 

This makes it easier for you to identify and organize the positive posts from the negative ones.

 

 

Tips for Social Proof Trust Signals

 

Turn the Tables on Negative Reviews

While gathering trust signals, you will encounter less-than-glowing reviews about your products and services.

 

Bad reviews can influence 80% of consumers to not buy from your brand. Therefore, the normal response is to do whatever it takes to protect your business at all costs.

 

However, the last thing you want to do is burn bridges with customers. Also, going nuclear on clients reflects poorly on your business too.

 

If prospects research your business and see how badly you deal with criticism, they’ll go with your competitors instead.

 

Therefore, you must look at negative reviews as an opportunity to learn from your mistakes and mend the fence with customers and prospects.

 

Below are things you must to handle bad online reviews with grace:

 

• Answer quickly and address their concerns with humility. You want to show them that their issues are your priority.

 

• Never take the conversation personally. Even if the customers get nasty, refrain from leveling to them – maintain professionalism at all times.

 

• Try to fix the problem on the same thread online. People who visit the thread will then see that you are able to come to a resolution with the angry customer. This shows to them that you can manage problems with grace, allowing you to build trust with them.

 

• Always be gracious after the interaction with customers. The fact that they gave time to voice out concerns about your brand means that they care, which is more than you can ask from customers. Use your experience with these customers to improve your business and prevent this from happening again.

 

Self-Control When Featuring Trust Signals

Once you have collected trust signals for your landing pages, a good rule of thumb is to feature the ones that make sense on each page only.

 

An eCommerce store featuring guarantees (free shipping, 30-day refund period) and testimonials from satisfied customers makes sense.

 

Agencies can also use trust by association by showcasing well-known brands as customers and vendors.

 

Placing irrelevant trust seals on the page, no matter how impressive they may be, could also have a reverse effect on your conversion rates. Instead of gaining the trust of your audience, you’ll just end up annoying them.

 

At the same time, fewer trust signals could have a much more significant impact. Having a recognizable trust badge is better than having ten seals from unknown organizations.

 

A/B Test Your Signal Placements

The best way to know if your trust signals positively impact your landing page’s conversion rates is by A/B testing them.

 

Premium landing page builders allow you to create variants of your page, each of which can have different content and split-test them to see which version performs best.

 

After determining the winner, pit it against another variant in a different test. Keep doing this to help you get the most conversions out of your pages.

 

 

In the case of trust signals, test the best ones you have on the page. You can play around with their placement, layout, and appearance.

 

When designing variants, make sure that the variables you’re testing aren’t drastically different from each other. This way, you have control of the test and measure it correctly.

 

 

 

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Conclusion

The majority of the benefits trust signals bring to your business may not directly impact your SEO efforts.

 

However, they do help get the most out of your site’s SEO performance. So, if your site generates lots of traffic, it should convert visitors into leads, subscribers, or customers.

 

Regardless of what the goal is, you can maximize the results if people trust you. And you can do this with the help of trust signals that you can feature on the page, and they can find online.

 

 

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