Interview: Inspiring social change with ‘Uplifting Gifting’
In June 2013, Nominet Trust, the corporate foundation of Nominet (the .co.uk registry), launched their search for The Nominet Trust 100 – a collective of the 100 most inspiring social technology innovations from around the world.
Is your site safe for Christmas shoppers?
These days, people are spending more time online and logged in. They are also communicating much more than just their credit card numbers. However, if your site doesn’t inspire trust, they’ll leave in a matter of seconds. With Christmas approaching, when customer demand is at its highest, you need to go the extra mile to reassure your visitors that your site is safe, and so is the information they share with you. Does your site inspire trust? A site that inspires trust and confidence is what gives it a competitive advantage and, ultimately, what convinces people to buy. Today, web users need to trust that you are who you say you are and that they should feel confident purchasing from your site. What better way to prove that your site is legitimate than a SSL? SSL technologies help protect sensitive information such as passwords and credit card numbers by: Encrypting the data that is being sent between a website and the visitor’s computer, which means no one else can read it. Confirming the identity of a website thus reassuring you that the website you are visiting is legitimate. When you use SSL on your site, it will not only keep your customer’s sensitive information secure but it’ll also make your site much less of a target for phishing. Showing credibility in under 5 seconds Just like we decide to go into a store by just glancing at what it looks like, you also need to prove that your site is legitimate and safe as soon as a visitor enters the site. Whatever you do, make it obvious. When you use a SSL certificate, a padlock will show next to your website address reassuring visitors that the site is safe and secure. However, an Extended SSL will highlight your details in a green bar, which is an immediate sign that that website is secure. Find out more about our SSL Certificates. These are just a few of the solutions you can implement to not only keep your site secure, but also to sell more products and attract more customers. How about you: how are you making your site’s credibility obvious to your customers?
How to gain trust with links
SEO is not a set-it-and-forget it process. You can’t just work a few hours on your on-page SEO and then expect your site to climb to the top position on Google. If this were possible, a lot of us would be out of a job. Optimising your site for search engines takes time and if you do it white-hat you can build the level of trust that Google searches for when it determines what results to return. No one can deny the importance of on-page SEO as you need a clean and easy to crawl architecture, a solid on-site linking structure and content that is optimised for strong keywords. However, on-page SEO is not enough. You still need to build trust and authority on search engines. If there’s no trust, then it’s unlikely that your site will have any chance of competing with others in the industry. So, how can you gain trust with links? Have popular bloggers review your product Getting high-quality links from authority sites that are already trusted by search engines is the way to go. These sites have already earned trust for their niche and by getting some love from them via links your site will also earn some trust. For example, if you are selling shoes online, you want to get some love via links from quality shoes or clothing related sites. A fantastic way to do this is to have popular bloggers review your products. There are plenty of authority bloggers that are known to write reviews about various project so what you can do is to reach out to them and make them an offer they cannot refuse. For instance, you can send them your product for free so they can test it and write a review about it. So, they get a great product while you get the word out there about your product. It’s a win-win. Create content that people will want to share Use content marketing to create a clever or hilarious message/ infographic/ video, etc that raises awareness on your brand. If it’s amazing, people will not hesitate to share it again and again. Sure, not all the links you acquire will come from trusted sources, but some of them will make it all worth it. Send out press releases This is the easiest thing you can do to increase your link profile. Use a distribution service, free or paid, to share your press releases but make sure these are of interest for your customers and potential clients. If your press release is not newsworthy, then it’s not worth reading it. We’ll talk about how to optimise your press release in a future post. Your turn now. What are you doing to climb the ranks in search engines?
How to build a site that visitors trust
Every business on the Internet wants to achieve four goals: increase sales, get more revenue, increase customer loyalty and get new customers. There are many ways to achieve these goals like offering discounts, creating contests and promoting products and services on every relevant channel. Even if these techniques are good and work most of the time, there is one thing that most people ignore but that can help get more revenue: building a site that visitors trust. When a visitor believes a site it trustworthy, chances are he or she will complete the sale and not abandon their cart because they don’t feel your site is secure enough. To gain the trust of your visitors and get them to convert, you must first build a trustworthy site. A trustworthy site refers to reputation and security. Reputation A company’s reputation reassures visitors that your business is not only a popular business, but also a reputable and reliable business. If you are a reputable brand like Amazon, people expect to get their orders on time and be provided with excellent customer service when needed. However, to determine what your selling point is and what impresses your visitors, you need to get to know them first. We’re all different and we’re affected by different elements. For example, some may be impressed by a company’s number of customers, years of experience or awards. Others can be impressed by a huge number of Facebook fans or Twitter followers or flattering testimonials from former or current customers. So, get to know your customers and show them what they need to see to feel more confident when buying from your site. On a different note, one thing is for sure: if your content has grammar or spelling errors, few visitors will dare to buy from your site. So, pay closer attention to the finer points of the content on your site. If you’re just starting out, it may be a bit more difficult to get visitors to trust you but not impossible! Find your selling points and promote them heavily. Offer free trials and ask for feedback to get others to see how great your product or customer service is. Security Your visitors need a guarantee that your site is safe and secure. You may be taking all the precautions, using website protection solutions like the 123-reg Site Scanner to keep your site secure, but you visitors don’t know that unless you show it to them. Now, more than ever, people are scared to share their sensitive information online because of the recent hacks and breaches on important sites that were believed to be 100% secure. So, one thing you can do to show visitors that your site is trustworthy is to use a security seal. The security seal appears in your visitor’s browser letting him know your site is secure. We have just launched Site Scanner, a website protection solution that helps keep your site secure against hackers. This also includes a Site Seal that you can use on your site to show visitors that your site is protected by an advanced security solution from 123-reg. Find out more about the 123-reg Site Seal and our recently launched Site Scanner solution. What other things are you doing to build a trustworthy site?