Using Visual Trust Signals to Increase Website Conversions

You can say you’re trustworthy. 

You can say you’re experienced. 

You can say you’re great at what you do. 

But if your website doesn’t show it visually, visitors hesitate. 

And hesitation kills conversions. 

In this episode, we’re talking about how visual trust signals work, why they matter so much, and how small changes to your website can make visitors feel safer, more confident, and more ready to say yes. 

Rate, Review, & Follow on Apple Podcasts

If you're loving my eCommerce Made Easy Podcast, I'd be thrilled if you could rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts. Your ratings and reviews help me reach more listeners and empower more people like you to thrive in the online business world.

Just click here to head over to Apple Podcasts, scroll down, give us a five-star rating, and share what you enjoyed most about the episode in the "Write a Review" section.

If you haven't hit that follow button yet, now’s the perfect time! I have new episodes coming your way every week that you won't want to miss. Hit the follow button and stay up to date with the eCommerce Made Easy Podcast! Follow Now!

 🎉 Join my free Facebook group for online business owners: Website & Tech Tips for Online Business Owners! Get answers to your tech questions, promote your business, and connect with other entrepreneurs. Trainings, tools, and support to help you grow smarter—without the overwhelm.
👉 smarteronlinebusiness.com/facebook

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Visual Trust Beats Claims
• 0:36 Who This Show Helps And Why
• 1:08 Defining Trust And Buyer Confidence
• 2:26 Concrete Visual Trust Signals
• 4:04 Payment Badges And Checkout Reassurance
• 5:10 Humanizing With Team And Behind-The-Scenes
• 6:01 Common Trust Mistakes To Avoid
• 7:21 Where Trust Should Appear On Pages
• 9:27 Newsletter Invite And Action Audit
• 10:18 Final Checkpoints And Close

Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:00

You can say you're trustworthy. You can say you're experienced. You can say you're great at what you do. But if your website doesn't show it visually, visitors will hesitate. And hesitation, as we know, as we talk about on this podcast, kills conversions. In this episode, we're talking about how visual trust signals work and why they matter so much. And how small changes to your website can make your visitors feel safer, more confident, and ready to say yes. I'll also share one trust signal almost everyone forgets to include, and why adding it alone can improve conversions fast. Let's dive in. Struggling to turn website traffic into real sales, you're not alone and you don't have to figure it out all yourself. Welcome to Smarter Online Business, the podcast for course creators, coaches, and e-commerce entrepreneurs who want their websites to convert visitors into buyers without the tech overwhelm. I'm your host, Carrie Saunders, a website strategist and conversion expert with over 20 years of experience. Each episode delivers simple, proven strategies to help you generate more revenue and make your website your smartest sales tool. Welcome back to the show. Today we're talking about how we need to show trust on our website as well as say trust on our website. We've talked on several episodes on how do we change our wording and change some things to, you know, kind of say trust, but we also want to visually include trust on our website. So trust is the biggest conversion killer or trigger, depending upon which way you land on the trust factor. Because people don't buy when they feel uncertain. If they feel like they can trust you, your products, your services, your reviews, your testimonials, if they get a good vibe from you and feel like they can trust you, they're going to buy a lot more often. And online trust, your website has to replace your in-person reassurance. So it's like we need to somehow evoke ourselves in our websites, both visually as well as the written word, to have somebody trust us well. Trust answers the unspoken question in all of our minds constantly. This is always in our minds. Is this business legitimate, capable, and safe? When we're considering shopping from somebody, that is always in the back of our minds, whether we consciously know it or not. And if visitors feel secure, they don't click, they don't opt in, they leave, they don't do the actions that you want them to do, and that you're working so hard to get them to do. So, what are those visual trust signals that we can add to our websites? They can include client logos or trusted by sections. They can include testimonials with real photos of real people, and it's got to be obvious that they are real people, or it could have real names. I highly recommend if you do testimonials, especially that ones that come from, say, another platform, let's say Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram, take screenshots of that testimonial on that platform because even though it's a little bit, I would say maybe not as neat looking as if you retyped it, it is visually recognizable. They will know that oh, they screenshotted this from the actual platform. So that builds a lot more trust. Even though this is written word that you're screenshotting, it's visually appealing and it's visually trust signal right there. Also, if you have any media mentions or features, put those on your website and professional imagery instead of stock overload. It's it's normal to have some stock images. I'm not saying don't use any stock images, but also have some professional photo imagery too, whether that's of yourself or of your products that you're selling. So even though the product suppliers will give you great images of their products, so say you're selling physical products on an e-commerce store. If you add in some of your own visuals, some of your own unique photos, that can really help not only the customers trust you, but actually it can help Google. That way you're not having all the same images as all the other people that sell the same things. And then once we get towards that checkout stage, secure checkout icons and payment badges can also help people visually recognize that you have you know trusted payment methods on the website. Anymore, I don't know whether people trust the secure checkout icons. It used to be a quite a big deal, and it was actually kind of hard to get it on your website. Uh, anymore, pretty much anybody can just put one of those on there, but it's still a recognized image. Um, but really those payment methods, the images of the payment methods can be really helpful whenever we want to build trust because many of the payment methods that people have on their website are safer because they're not like within the website. I'm starting to get a little bit nerdy here on how payment processors work, but it can help them, like you know, the external ones like Venmo or PayPal or uh Apple Pay, Google Wallet, those are all external type of payment processors, and people tend to trust those more than just a direct credit card sometimes. So having those trust logos of those different ways that you take payment methods can really help. Also, if you have a team, do some team photos. And I know I'm saying this and we don't have photos of our team up there, but I've got programmers. Most of those, most of them are introverts and don't want their photo taken. But if you can do team photos or behind-the-scene visuals, that's the behind-the-scals is something I'm working to add to our website. I mean, I have to be careful about it because you know we're usually working on a client's website, so I don't want to give away client information, but that's something that we're working on since the team photo part is not really something I feel comfortable doing because I know several my employees aren't comfortable with that. But these trust signals work. Pick whichever ones work for your company, just like I'm talking about right here, what would and wouldn't work for us, because people decide emotionally first and then they judge logically after that. So you want to evoke that emotion and that trust first so that they will read more, so they will dig in more to what you have to say. So, some of the ways we see websites go wrong, and most commonly is they're relying only on written claims. They rely only on text, they don't have these visuals we're talking about. Many times they'll also bury testimonials way too far down the page. It's a good idea to sprinkle them throughout your website or have at least a really quick, easy link at the top of the website to get to your testimonials if you feel like it would clutter your website to put them within the page. And then also using generic stock images only. That can feel very impersonal. People can tell on their stock images. Like I said, some stock images isn't that big of a deal. It's pretty normal. But we want to also have professional images on there too. And then if you are your own brand or a personal brand, not having any photos of you can be a trust breaker factor. People want to know who's behind this brand, so that can really help them connect with you a lot better. Also, don't just show credentials without having context behind them too, especially if it's not a credential that maybe most people know about. So we want to substantiate any of the credentials or show how they fit in, if if they're maybe kind of a side tangent to what you do, but you see how they relate, give it, give that background information to it so that they can connect the dots much easier. And I know some of you are shy. I know some of our clients are shy and they don't want to share their faces online, which is completely fine. But if you're comfortable doing that, the most forgotten trust signal is letting people see who they're buying from. Having a photo of yourself is a really good idea if you can and if you're comfortable with doing that. It could be just simply in the about page. It doesn't have to be on your homepage, it doesn't have to be right in your face. But you know, a little photo, a professional photo of you and who's behind the company can really go a long way to building trust, especially those who are starting to build trust and just want to do that last double check and look at your about page to see who you are and what your company is about. So let's talk about where do we place these visual uh trust images on our website. What are the best places? One of the first ones is above the fold. That's a really great place. We want to have some sort of trust signal above the fold. We want them to land on your web page, and the first thing they see is something that helps them build trust. You're also probably going to have it near primary call to action buttons as well. Let's say you have an add-to-cart button or a checkout button. Make sure you have any of the trust images that you want to put up around, you know, somewhere near those so they can be seen really easily. And also on sales pages before pricing happens. Um, about pages with real photos and a story. We kind of went into this a little bit already, but it's that about page is so underrated. It's not even funny. It's very important to have a really good about page telling the story. So to recap this section, trust should appear before someone needs reassurance, not after they're already nervous. So when you're deciding on these points of where we're going to put these visual trust badges or trust um reassurance items, we want to put them before they feel like they need reassured. So try to think through what your customer would be thinking if they're brand new to you and don't know you and don't trust you. Where would they need to see it before they can do that next thing that you want them to do? And if you love tips like this, like we do on our podcast, I encourage you to join our newsletter. You can head on over to Smarteronline Business.com forward slash newsletter and sign up today. We send out a weekly newsletter to help you grow your business. Very low volume, and we'd love to have you in there. We have a lot of fun getting to know our listeners and our customers and our newsletter. And then that bonus tip I wanted to give you. I want you to pull up your homepage after you're listening to this. And if you're listening on the go, make a note on your calendar that you do this. I want you to pull up your homepage and ask yourself these questions. Can someone quickly see who is behind this business? Is there proof that others trust you? Are the trust signals visible before asking for action? If the answer is no to these, your website might be asking for commitment before earning confidence. It's kind of like asking somebody to go on that date before you've gotten to know them a little bit. That's all we have for this week's episode of the Smarter Online Business Podcast. We hope you thoroughly enjoyed it. Be sure to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. That helps us get the word out and help other businesses just like you. See you next week.