There are countless websites on the internet, and while we aren’t as much in the Wild West days of a few decades ago, there are still plenty of security risks that make users careful. That caution is entirely reasonable. However, businesses want to give an immediate trustworthy impression on their website or else cautious users are more likely to close the tab. One of the best ways to instill that immediate credibility is to understand the psychology behind website design. In this blog we explain some key design practices for how your business’ website can instill trust and credibility.

Keeping Cognitive Load Low and Trust High

Psychologically, the human brain can only process so much information at once. This is obvious when someone is trying to speak with another person who is reading. Although they can hear them, they don’t cognitively process anything they say. This cap or limit of what we can process is our cognitive load. If cognitive load is overwhelmed, it can be confusing and even paralyzing. That paralysis can lead to an immediate sense of distrust for users.

For website design, you can manage your user’s cognitive load by organizing information into categories and groups. Rather than providing all the information about your business and every one of its services or products all at once immediately at page load, you start with an overview and/or some key recommendations (your users would then click on what they need/want). These should also be legible and visually organized, so that users can easily understand them.

Similarly, rather than listing every single page on the website, the menu is organized hierarchically, allowing users to first pick a larger category and then find the more specific page they want there. These website designs apply the psychological principle of Hick’s Law, which observes that humans make a choice from various options by subdividing into groups and reducing the available options speeds up their decision making. Thus, reducing cognitive load and using hierarchical designs allows users to speedily navigate it without becoming cognitively overloaded.

Keeping It All Connected – No Broken Links

Along with ease of navigation by not overwhelming your users, you also don’t want to perplex them with links which lead to the wrong page or a page that no longer exists. These broken links immediately impact a website’s credibility as users find themselves on a page they didn’t expect or one that doesn’t exist at all. It can feel like a trick or raise questions about the website’s maintenance, and thus its reliability. Broken links can also be detrimental to a website’s SEO.

There are a few ways to prevent and repair broken links. If they are to your own website’s pages, be sure to update these links or create redirects that will immediately take users to the right page. There are also tools that will help you find broken links. These can be plugins, website audits, or even using Google’s Search Console. Any of these will help you find those pesky broken links.

Optimizing Performance

Another maintenance tip that helps to improve a website’s credibility is to ensure all pages load quickly and run smoothly. When a website takes a long time to load or chugs along at even the simplest interactions, users begin to lose trust and patience. Just like broken links, it raises questions of credibility around the website’s maintenance, which in turn raise security and quality concerns that transition to their impression of the business itself. Psychologically, poor performance can also make users feel that they are not in control of their experience on the website, which will further harm their trust of the website. Ensuring your website operates efficiently on all devices, including mobile and desktops, helps to secure credibility for your website and business.

The Trust in Words and Brands

Along with functionality and performance, there are numerous other methods for psychologically fostering trust in your website’s design, including the good word of others. Testimonials from customers help to establish trust and credibility in a few ways. First, is that they simply act as evidence for your business’ quality of services/products. Psychologically, attaching images or videos of smiling clients to these testimonials further establishes trust and credibility, as humans naturally have positive associations with happy faces.

Along with testimonials, you can also feature the logos of companies your business has collaborated with on the website’s home page. If users trust these brands, they will immediately transfer some of that credibility onto your business. As well, psychology has demonstrated that humans have innate positive associations with images they recognize. Seeing brand logos they know, even if they do not have a lot of experience with them, will inherently increase the credibility of your business and website.

Verifying Security

Another way to visually improve the credibility of your business’ website is through security verification. For example, an SSL or TLS certificate indicates that the traffic on your website has been encrypted, making it safer for users. These encryptions are then verified by various services, such as Let’s Encrypt and  Google Trust Services, to tell a browser. Today, if a website isn’t encrypted, browsers will often warn the user and advise they not load the page. That won’t fare well for your business’ reputation as users are directed away. Thankfully, if you’re using a service like WordPress or Shopify for your business, they include such security (so long as you keep your website updated).

There are also other security features that comfort users to build website credibility along with increasing its security. Such services include reCaptcha, which protects websites from malicious bots, preventing fraud and attacks. When reCaptcha is added to a website, it also adds a badge, informing users the website is being secured. This immediately supports a business’ credibility as users see the website is more secure.

Open Information is Essential to Credibility

If someone thinks information is unclear or being kept from them, they immediately become less trusting. That’s no different for users on websites. Open communication and clear information are critical for a business’ credibility on the web. Clear links to all policies and providing all relevant information on products or services builds and establishes trust. Also, providing clear and direct contact information is essential to a website’s credibility. When users see there is a clear physical address, email, or phone number they can contact for more communication, their trust increases. Conversely, if these contact methods are not included on a website, customers immediately become suspicious of a business.

Trusting Credible Design

You should now have a good sense of some essential business for website credibility and its importance. Even then, there’s still more psychological principles to learn for web design, such as colour associations. Nevertheless, by considering the psychology behind website design, you can trust that your business’ website will establish its credibility. If you’re looking to improve your website’s credibility or create a new, trustworthy design, contact our web design team at Rosewood Marketing. You can trust their expertise.