BS2 Website Design, Development, Hosting & Domain Registration

Building Trust Through Your Website

2007-09-28T12:08:02Z

Here are a few pointers when it comes to developing a status of trusted advisor with your customers, leads and prospects. All business depends upon trust. It is hard won and needs to be consolidated. Here are a few pointers that will help you to build your site visitors’ trust in your business’ website presence.
1. Trust is built across every page of your website.
2. Design is the first impression it must be professional and focused.
3. Navigation must be intuitive obvious, registration and log in links must be clearly visible.
4. The voice of the text must be a combination of informative, conversational and formal. It must be carefully crafted to achieve this aim.
5. Content must be Honest, Exclusive, Accurate, Relevant and Timely: H.O.N.E.S.T.
6. The style and choice of language must be tailored to the audience.
7. Update the site regularly with new content.
8. All links MUST work.
9. Spelling must be consistent for example British or US English not a combination.
10. All product and service claims must be measured and accurate. That is not to say you cannot sell the service, but overselling is patronising to some audiences.
11. Use testimonials or links to other websites and so on.
12. Success stories, satisfied customers, positive feedback on forums all helps.
13. Do not criticise the competition overtly. This is implied from the superiority of your own products or services.
14. Look at the long term to build customer relations.
15. Text must be written for people not just a search engine. But of course skilful drafting can accomplish both.
16. If possible, and subject to the consent of those involved, have a brief resume of your staff, pictures of them and so on to make the site more personal.
17. Photographs of the premises can serve as a useful back up plan.
18. Do not conceal addresses, ownership or be evasive.
19. On the ‘Contact Us’ page, provide an email address or contact form, telephone number, and address of the company.
20. Provide a telephone number that is live, even if it is a mobile.
21. You must have your own domain name.
22. Do not lie to make money. You will be denigrated across forums, blogs and so on.
23. Consider reciprocal links carefully.
24. Advertisements on your site must be relevant to the content
25. Be explicit when you are being paid to endorse a product or service.
26. Write and publish your privacy policy. It must be clear and comply with local laws.
27. If you sell good or services via the internet write and publish a security policy. State what measures you take to ensure that all transactions are secure.
28. Security and privacy policies should be linked from the footer on every page. Make it more prominent on order pages.
29. Publish any guarantees you offer, be sure to abide by them
30. Clearly state your refund and returns policy.
31. Leverage the brands of your suppliers: If you use PayPal, use the PayPal logo on your site. If you have a merchant account, put the bank’s logo on your site.
32. Use Google search on your site for two reasons: it is a useful search tool and you are leveraging the Google brand image.
33. If there are well-known industry associations for your business sector, join and put their logo on your website.
34. Consider a forum on your site and respond quickly to questions. However, you will need to monitor this closely to catch abusive comments from competitors and spam posts. It may not be suitable for every business.
35. Encourage feedback on any articles you publish.
36. If people provide constructive criticism or comments in the forum, do not necessarily delete them: respond with your side of it.
37. Use lots of imagery around your hot links and links to important pages.
38. Use images of credit cards accepted on every order page.
39. Use the words ’secure website’ whenever you need to obtain information from visitors, including newsletter sign-ups, forums and payment.
40. On every page, possibly in the footer, make a statement about privacy and security. However this is not necessary for all websites, mainly retailers.
41. Protect your reputation from within by being straightforward.
42. Subscription services should have introductory offers, useful for most products, known as a drop pitch.
43. Use reputable SSL suppliers.
44. You must use SSL for any communications involving credit cards.
45. Do not ask someone’s date of birth and address if they are only signing up for a newsletter, it is too intrusive and undermines your trust ratio as it makes the prospect question your motivation.
46. Prices must be clear and not subject to hidden extras (like sales tax).
47. Keep all SSL certificates up to date. Let people know you are using SSL encryption and who the provider is, if possible using their logo.
If you follow the simple steps above and your site is well designed, the content interesting and intuitive to navigate you will begin to gain your prospect’s trust.

A Website is like a Novel

2007-09-28T10:26:22Z

Most businesses today have an internet presence. Some content-driven, others provide online services through sophisticated user interfaces. Others are providing entertainment their visitors – Youtube being an example. Whatever your website is for, there are a few fundamentals to consider before the build starts.

Your first objective must be focus. Visitors want instant gratification, to be sure they are at the right place, if your site is to vague it will not be sticky and your visitors will leave. Within a few seconds your site must communicate its message.

One way of focusing the whole design and content is to write a précis of what your site does and why. In the same way that a well written novel will have a central premise that plot, characters, dialogue and narrative promote, so your site must have this focus.

Once you have this description carefully crafted select some key phrases from it and search on Google. These websites are your competition.

It is essential that your visitors see this mission statement immediately to reassure them that they are in the right place.

The second objective is to deal with the premise in depth. To do so you must provide well-written content that is as focused as the mission statement.

The more you write about your premise the more searches will be picked up by search engines. But the content must be useful. Spamming with random text stuffed with keywords does not work.

If your site is focused and provides a useful resource to your visitor it will have a good chance to stick to your visitor: they will look around. So you are now providing your visitor with value.

The next step is to have further value statements: satisfied customers, examples of services provided, pictures and prices of products and so on. Of course the content is augmented by the graphics that surround it. The same principle is applicable to logo design and layout: they must all support the basic premise of the site.

Logos

2007-09-16T22:47:08Z

We design website logos, banner ads, letterhead, corporate logos and anything else remotely graphic that can be designed on a computer. Using top line software tools and photographic techniques you will be amazed at the difference a well designed logo will make to conversions and presentations.

Graphic Design

2007-09-16T22:44:41Z

We have considerable inhouse talent available when it comes to the creation of graphics, visual effects, interfaces and logos.

Check out www.poet.me.uk and www.blog.poet.me.uk for award winning examples.

Prices vary but begin at around £150.

We also invite enquiries concerning book covers, print advertising, animated brocures, presentations, commissions for one off art works, posters, leaflets et al.