Looking for ways to make your website or online business inspire confidence in its visitors? Earning consumer confidence is vital to attaining lifelong, repeat customers. And besides the staples of online business — things like secure shopping carts, sharing your professional affiliations, and so on — there are a few remarkably simple but often overlooked ways to build consumer confidence. Here are 5 of them that you can implement in practically no time at all:

1. Be Uniquely Informative.
   Consumers trust the experts. The good news is that we all have a little bit of expertise somewhere in us — we’ve just got to share it. Present visitors to your site with painstakingly accurate information that’s both helpful and relevant to their needs. But be sure that in doing so, you share your own unique voice instead of coming across as just another big company. Standing out from the crowd by sharing your own nuanced perspective on the subject matter helps brand you as an expert.
2. Transparency Is The Name Of The Game.
   Tell your visitors who you are, where you are, and how they can reach you. Sounds like common sense, but on the web, too many sites seem to do everything possible to hide their true identity — and that’s not good for building consumer confidence!
3. Give Visitors Options.
   Let them be in control. Present visitors with choices and options necessary to become trusted clients at their own pace. Sure, forward pushing sales techniques can work wonderfully, but if building confidence in your business is priority number one, it’s probably wise to focus instead on a "pull" type website. In other words, the strategy is to allow and encourage visitors to share information or take the next step at their own speed rather than pushing them to do so immediately.
4. Share The Love.
   It might be contrary to common practice, but one thing the blogosphere has taught us is that sometimes freely sharing links to external high-relevance resources (not your competitors, of course) can be an excellent way to build trust with your visitors. It tells them that you care about them enough to help them even if it means sending them away from your site. The idea is that they’ll come back to you as a trusted resource, permitting you many future opportunities to convert.
5. Nail The Aesthetics.
   Make your site perfect in every way possible. Now, this absolutely does not mean you need to have the flashiest website in the business at all. In fact, sometimes the simple sites come across as being much more professional and trustworthy. But at the same time, you’ve got to focus on the smallest details and show your visitors visually that you’re obviously in it for the long haul — not fly-by-night — so that they can be inspired to have consumer trust in your website.

These five easy ways to build consumer confidence are a great start. But why not take things a step or two further? To do so, just keep your own log of the sites you visit yourself and what makes you feel secure (and what turns you away). Do this for a week or two and you’ll have a treasure trove full of ideas to implement that will help you build trust a

Until Next Time.
George Chaney
President/CEO
SEO King, Inc.