trust and expectation

Trust

Back in the days when the internet was new, you could slap up a page, offer something for sale, and someone

would buy. Things are different today.

Visitors have certain expectations of a website, and meeting those expectations helps them feel like you

are professional, helpful, and familiar.

With trust and small business relationships, familiarity is a huge thing –

if your site feels familiar and they can find things where they expect to, and the information they want is readily

accessible, then you've begun to forge a long term reciprocal relationship with them.

If your site is awkward, and your information hard to find, and the expected validation info is nowhere to

be seen, they will feel like you are shifty, inexperienced, or untrustworthy. That translates into a lost

sale.

Some common expectations of visitors to your site are:

1.

Understandable product descriptions,

which include necessary performance specs and details.

2.

About Us, and Contact Us info,

placed in an expected area (links at the top or bottom of the page, or

at the bottom of your product or service links). They want to know who you are and how to reach you.

3. Clearly posted prices.

4.

Clearly posted and reasonable support and guarantee policies.

Also, shipping policies, return

policies, and privacy policies, if they apply to your business.

5.

Easy navigation

(covered in detail in the navigation section).

6.

A professional site design, that works predictably.

It does not need to be elaborate, it DOES have to

work!

Think about how you react when you come into a site, and find things that are confusing, misplaced, or

completely missing. Do you want your customer to act that way?

Web standards and styles have changed in the last few years also.

Business sites that looked like personal

sites used to be acceptable, but they are not now. The expectation of professionalism is a lot higher now than it

used to be, and people will assume that if you cannot afford to hire a designer – or to do a quality job yourself –

that you are not successful at business. And they like to patronize successful businesses.

The same issue holds with free web space. Someone else's ads on your product or service sales site is not

good. It makes you look desperate. Lack of a true domain also makes you look cheap –

after all, a domain

name only costs about $9 a year. Good hosting costs less than $10 a month, so if your business is

making anything at all, or if you expect it to, then it is a reasonable expense, and a necessary one.

It isn't all about money, and it isn't all about hiring someone to do it for you.

It just means that if you do it

yourself, you need to be prepared to spend a lot of time learning about it, and be willing to take criticism so you

can improve it and make it work well. Web design is now a highly complex field, with many areas of sub-

specialty. It takes years to learn, layer on layer, to develop the proficiency to build a site that functions flawlessly

all the way around.

When you hire someone, and you have a tight budget, you need to make sure they are making cost

cutting economies in areas where it won't hurt your site's ability to do what you need it to do right now.

That means they won't try to sell you on a 3 page “business card” site (which will not help your business and

may hurt it), they won't take shortcuts with the basic essential elements, and won't waste time or money on fluff

at the expense of core function.

Because it is a certainty that if they make the wrong cost containment

choices, it will affect your visitor's trust level on the site.

Web builders are not capable of leveling the playing field either, they produce templates that do not reflect the

character of your business, and which are not in any way unique. The sites are also typically slow, inflexible, and

LOOK like they were produced by a web builder.

Not all business owners will be able to quickly learn the basics – or they may feel it frustrates them so

 

badly that it is not worth it to them. For those who can learn these skills, it takes time, and good

instructions.

Sadly, most of the problems with trust issues in a site are created by web designers who charged the

site owner for the work.

Many are caused by do it yourself site owners who simply did not have the time to

learn everything at once (no criticism there!), but given the time it takes to learn the skills, it is understandable.

Web designers, though, ought to know better!

One reason we created this book is so business owners would be able to spot issues more easily

themselves,

whether they are doing it themselves, or whether they are hiring someone.

Business owners who

understand basic issues with web design are empowered, and do not need to be held hostage by

problems that they do not know how to spot.

A business owner SHOULD specialize in their business. But they need to know enough about what makes good

design to be able to insure that their site welcomes and reassures the visitor, and presents a virtual business

presence that is persuasive and effective in increasing revenue.