I’ve been working like mad man lately on this new business website, and its coming along really nicely.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot is “how can you build trust on a website?”

People have an inherent distrust of any service they see online, due to the number of the scams out there, and just shoddy companies.

Online is very different than the real world. In the real world when we meet someone we can get a “gut feeling” about them (ever heard that 93% of communication is non-verbal?) based on their body language, tone, rate of speaking etc. We make instant snap judgments whether we know it or not about whether we like and trust someone or something.

But in the online world, we are blind. We have nothing to go on except some words on a page, and human beings weren’t built to trust based on such limited information.

So here are some ideas I came up with to help built trust with prospective customers on yours website:

1. Show that other people trust you

It’s human nature to look and see how other people are acting (and copy it) any time we aren’t sure how to act. This is hard wired into us by nature. You see everyone else in your gang of primitive humans running away from something scary in the woods, well you better start running too. Those who didn’t, never lived long enough to become our ancestors.

So what does this mean online? If you can prove that other people trust you, it will give you instant credibility. Typically people do this with testimonials, but another great way is to let customers write reviews (Amazon is the king of this by the way). In my case, I’m letting customers write reviews of the tutors they used.

2. Piggy Back on Someone Else’s Good Name

The tutors that I’m hiring are all students at top universities. Those universities already have a great reputation, especially in their respective markets, so why not make that painfully obvious (in marketing materials) right up front: THE TUTOR YOU ARE GETTING IS FROM THIS GREAT SCHOOL.

If you are a total unknown just starting off, sometimes you can using others good names (the components that go in your products, the talent who is helping put the product together, someone well known in the field who you can get to endorse your product just by sending them a free copy and a self addressed stamped envelope with their endorsement pre-written for them!) to help launch your product.

One area to be careful of here: don’t infringe on anyones trademark. Originally I was thinking about using a domain name like HarvardUniversityTutors.com. But this would be going too far I think, and could legitimately cause confusion with customers thinking I was affiliated with the university. I’m sure it would be just a matter of time before I heard from Harvard’s lawyers if I used that name!

3. Give Something Away For Free

Finally, no matter what you do some people will just never trust you. So let them try it for free. No not just a money back guarantee. If they have to put in their credit card info you have already lost them. REALLY FREE.

Even if some people cheat the system, and only use the free version (or register a new email address every time) its fine. You have to be ok with that and trust that the majority of people out there are honest. By giving something away for free you will reach a much wider audience.

I’d rather get 50% of a million people to pay (and still help out the other 50% for free) than to get 100% of 10,000 people to pay. If the 50% that cheat and never pay will still tell others about your product and some of them will pay.

The 37 Signals folks agree that giving away something for free is essential. Check out their “Getting Real” book (which is outstanding by the way).

Eben Pagan has talked about this extensively too and he actually suggests you give away your BEST stuff for free. People wonder, “well if I give away my best stuff, what will people pay for?”. The counterintuitive but very important point here is that it is your free stuff (and best stuff) which will win people over and convince them how valuable you or your service are. Without it they would never even take the chance to look at your stuff at all. Convincing them is whats hard. Once they are convinced, they will gladly pay even for only a marginal benefit.

Just help as many people as possible and the rest will sort of take care of itself. Being stingy up front and asking people to fork over their money before you’ve proven yourself worthy, is a sure fire way to turn a bunch of people off.

Conclusion
Those are some thoughts on how to built trust through your website. In the next (and final) preview I’ll show you a google maps implementation I put together and show you the results of some early user testing I did.

The next step will be to start testing it with LIVE real people. I have to keep reminding myself to not make it perfect. Just get it out there and adjust as you go!

Until next time,
Brian Armstrong

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