10 guidelines for making your website credible

Websites keep becoming more important, partly because they’re being used to deliver an increasing array of content, tools and social media services.

So it’s critical that your website be credible. A website that lacks credibility has lost the battle before it has really begun.

Fortunately for all of us, Stanford University researchers conducted a three-year study to produce a report title Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility. The report, developed by the university’s Persuasion Technology Lab, explains in clear detail the factors that instill confidence in website visitors. The guidelines are based on interviews with more than 4,500 internet users.

If you’re looking to build a professional grade internet presence you would do very well to follow these 10 guidelines that researchers say build website credibility.

1. Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site. You can build website credibility by providing third-party support (citations, references, source material) for information you present, especially if you link to this evidence. Even if people don’t follow these links, you’ve shown confidence in your material.
2. Show that there’s a real organization behind your site. Proving that your website is for a legitimate organization will boost the site’s credibility. That’s easily accomplished by listing a physical address. Other features can also help, such as posting a photo of your office or listing a membership with a chamber of commerce or trade association.
3. Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide. Do you have experts on your team? Are your contributors or service providers authorities? Be sure to give their credentials. Are you affiliated with a respected organization? Make that clear. Conversely, don’t link to outside sites that are not credible. Your site becomes less credible by association.
4. Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site. The first part of this guideline is to show there are real people behind the site and in the organization. Next, find a way to convey their trustworthiness through images or text. For example, some sites post employee bios.
5. Make it easy to contact you. A simple way to boost your site’s credibility is by making your contact information clear: phone number, physical address and e-mail address.
6. Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for the purpose).Stanford researchers found that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. When designing your site, pay attention to layout, typography, images and consistency, among other factors. Of course, not all sites gain credibility by looking like IBM.com. The visual design should match the site’s purpose.
7. Make your site easy to use – and useful. Two guidelines are squeezed into one here. Stanford research shows that sites win credibility points by being both easy to use and useful. Some site operators forget about users when they cater to their own company’s ego or try to show the dazzling things they can do with flash animation and other web technology.
8. Update your site’s content often. People assign more credibility to sites that show they have been recently updated and reviewed.
9. Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers). If possible, avoid having ads on your site. If you must have ads, clearly distinguish the sponsored content from your own. Avoid pop-up ads. And keep the writing style clear, direct and sincere.
10. Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem. Typographical errors and broken links hurt a site’s credibility more than most people imagine. It’s also important to keep your site up and running, so choose a dependable hosting service.

You have too much at stake to have a second-rate website. Take advantage of this high-level research to enhance your site’s status.

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