How a powerful web design gives your brand confidence

The first few seconds on a website are immediately crucial. This is because in these brief moments, people immediately determine how much trust they place in what you have to say. What you especially don’t want is for visitors to distrust your story as soon as they step inside. Fortunately, with the help of powerful web design, this can be prevented in many cases. Using some key points, I will help you further increase trust in your website.

You may recognize that feeling: you open a search result, but as soon as the web page loads, alarm bells start ringing. You don’t know how quickly to hit that back button again and try elsewhere. Of course, you want to avoid that on your own Web site, so I’m here to help. In fact, by sticking to a few key points, you can prevent this from happening in many cases.

Provides a consistent experience across your website

My first tip is also perhaps the most important, because in my experience this is the one that will pinch the quickest: ensure a consistent experience throughout your website. Your website remains your digital signboard, and when everything on your website is jumbled and skewed, it doesn’t inspire much confidence for the rest of your product.

So what are the things to think about? Simple: everything you see at first glance. So use things like colors, fonts and icons consistently throughout your website. For example, if orange is an important color for your brand, you want to make sure you don’t have five different kinds of orange that are all just different. Or fonts that appear everywhere with no clear line. It makes you distrust – consciously or unconsciously – the website.

During the website process, I logically look at the designs with my design colleagues to make sure the consistent experience is maintained. But we can also provide advice for your old website with places where you can still improve it. That way your old website doesn’t have to go straight into the trash.

Bring a clear story to your visitor

Cluttered text, vague descriptions and woolly stories. When your message is not crystal clear, people are going to ask questions and look for answers on your website. But when people can’t find them on your website, chances are they’ll never return either. Instead, we say: play your cards straight. Tell an honest and clear story to your visitors and they will automatically begin to trust you more.

This applies to all the places in your website where you have something to say: from the homepage to your contact page – an honest story builds trust. Don’t be secretive in your story, but tell where your products come from. Explain how something came about and create expectations that your product can deliver. Promising a lot but not being able to deliver will only hurt your reputation in the end.

Proprietary photography gives your brand a face

It won’t be at the top of everyone’s to-do list by a long shot, but time and time again I see the difference that in-house photography can make to your website. The difference between photos of your company, your brand and your people or free stock photography is huge and will instantly improve trust when people come to your website.

Does this mean you have to get behind the camera yourself? If you are creative and happen to like being behind the camera: by all means do it! If not, then a good consideration is to look at a corporate photographer who can help you further. Budget is of course crucial here, but should this be limited then paid stock photography may be the way to go. Again, as long as it’s consistent, it adds to the familiar look of your website.

Oh yes, small side note: please don’t rely on AI tools to generate all the images for your website. While there are handy tools for cropping product images, for example, it will be abundantly clear for mood images that they were generated by AI and therefore will quickly feel cheap and reliable.

Show who you are

This is indirectly an extension of what we talked about above, but it builds confidence to show who you are. Do you have in-house specialists working for clients? Then it works better to show them, rather than generic people doing something. Especially if your people are also carrying brand carriers such as mugs, notebooks and other items with your logo on them.

It is good anyway to show who is behind the company: who makes your company the way it is. By showing your face, expressing your opinion about your product and telling people what makes your company so special. Hearing it come out of your mouth immediately gives that personal feeling and creates a bond – which in turn builds trust.

Be open to the conversation with your customer

The last point seems like an open door, but sometimes I still encounter it: websites where there is no way to find out the contact information. No e-mail address, no phone number, no contact form. It doesn’t paint a good picture, because then it looks like you don’t want to talk to your customers.

Therefore, make sure that in your website, people are never more than a click away from your contact information. From any page, your contact information should be easily accessible, ideally with ways to contact you directly as well. So make sure your email addresses are clickable, that you can call directly or that a simple contact form is available to your visitors. This way, a customer will know that you are reachable and open for conversation – that gives a familiar feeling.

By taking these things into account, you directly contribute to the trustworthiness of your website and brand, but there are many more things you can do. Wondering what else can be done to add trust to your brand and website? Then get in touch with me or one of my colleagues and we’ll be happy to help!