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Brand trust is a crucial factor influencing decisions within the typical buyer’s journey. In fact, it’s so essential that 95% of consumers say they need to trust a brand before considering a purchase. And for businesses operating in high-stakes industries, the importance of establishing credibility is even higher.
There are many ways to earn consumer trust and drive confidence with the ultimate goal of growing your business. And even though it’s commonly overlooked, strategic web design can go a long way in building trust. This guide explores some of the best tactics to use design to maximize brand credibility, with several inspiring examples of companies doing it well.
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Even though it doesn’t necessarily fall under the category of ‘trust building,’ prioritizing product and service clarity is one of the most essential steps toward building consumer confidence. And it’s especially important in high-stakes industries where buyers are expected to take on risks, pay large sums, or put their well-being on the line.
Ultimately, consumers aiming to learn what a product does and how they can benefit from it aren’t just randomly collecting pre-purchase information. They’re equipping themselves with information so that they can make an informed buying decision that they won’t regret later.
And if you look at scientific research on the relationship among product value understanding, brand trust, and purchase intent, you’ll find they’re closely linked, with greater clarity of value automatically elevating brand credibility and the likelihood of conversion.
One of the most effective ways to ensure your target audience fully understands the benefits of your offer is to make design decisions that aid product understanding.
Visually highlight value proposition messaging. Create user-centric content for optimal product education. And minimize the use of design elements that could be distracting or confusing.
The Talkspace homepage is an excellent example of a business that uses design for clarity. With just a glance at the site’s hero section, potential customers immediately understand that the business offers research-backed therapy, that it’s covered by insurance, and that it’s as effective as in-person therapy. The understanding builds trust. And trust drives purchase intent.
Source: talkspace.com
When choosing what products or services to purchase, most consumers have a few basic (but essential) requirements.
They want the solution to be of high quality. They want good value for money. And they want to be able to trust the provider’s competence.
So, when exploring design strategies to build brand trust — especially in high-stakes industries — your goal shouldn’t just be to convince your target audience of the value you offer. Nor should it be to emphasize the affordability of your products and services.
In addition to these trust-building tactics, you have to demonstrate your team’s niche expertise and competence.
Credibility-based positioning isn’t a complex trust marketing tactic. Simple strategies — like informing your audience of your brand’s history and experience — can be more than sufficient to build brand trust.
Nevertheless, the importance of emphasizing competence is greater in high-stakes industries. This is why using design tactics to ensure the message gets across could be the best way to demonstrate expertise.
In addition to sharing your brand’s history, explore more visually engaging ways to communicate competence.
Employ visual hierarchy to ensure your brand’s history and experience are immediately noticeable on your About pages. Showcase relevant certifications to back your expertise-related claims with objective proof. And assign a prime position to all trust elements that signal competence, including positive (and detailed) customer feedback.
The Freeburg Law website employs all of these trust-building design tactics. What stands out about this brand’s approach to earning customer confidence is that it does this gradually. It chooses to organically inject visual trust signals into its web content, ensuring that potential clients see confidence-boosting information at the precise moments in the buyer’s journey where these matter the most.
Source: tetonattorney.com
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Building brand trust can be achieved in many different ways. But while clearly communicating product value and highlighting expertise can go a long way, they’re not always sufficient to earn consumer confidence.
Instead, research suggests that there might be more to brand credibility than competence.
According to research, 75% of consumers consider transparency important when choosing brands to buy from. Furthermore, almost two-thirds would switch from a brand they usually buy to a business that provides more transparent product information.
In high-stakes industries, transparency can be even more essential, primarily because a willingness to provide customers with unfiltered information shows your business’s commitment to prioritizing customer interests over profits.
While there are many ways to build brand trust through transparency, the simple truth is that most tactics rely on the free flow of information. Some strategies may rely on unfiltered insights into how a company operates — like behind-the-scenes content or production process breakdowns. Nevertheless, none of these activities requires a specific design approach.
Yet, using the right visual communication techniques could help brands establish transparency — particularly in industries where visual information yields better understanding than text alone.
For example, Asia Patient knows its target audience wants transparent pricing information for the procedures it offers. To make it easy for leads to compare their options — and to earn web visitors’ trust by committing to transparency — this brand uses charts and tables to help prospects visualize the difference in cost between getting a procedure done in Asia, the USA, or Australia.
Source: asiapatient.com
In some situations, the primary point of trust marketing isn’t to convince customers of the quality or value of your offer. Instead, your ultimate goal should be to remove their fears and doubts and enable them to make confident purchase decisions — even for high-stakes products and services.
Naturally, the best way to accomplish this isn’t just to study and understand the various factors stopping your leads from becoming customers. It’s equally important to address these conversion obstacles, ideally removing them through educational resources, reassurance, and a variety of customer-centric guarantees.
Many content formats can help build consumer confidence and reassure risk-averse web visitors. Easily accessible return policies, customer satisfaction guarantees, FAQ resources, and size charts are all exceptional assets to display throughout your website.
However, if you operate in a high-stakes industry, waiting for your web visitors to seek these resources out might not be enough — especially if you know that your prospects’ willingness to interact with your business depends on how much they trust your brand.
So, it’s important to explore opportunities to highlight risk-minimizing web content. For instance, you can use simple design tactics to ensure web visitors notice these assets during the most crucial moments of their browsing journey.
Check out CapitalPad. You’ll instantly notice that this private equity co-investment group uses a web layout to seamlessly draw visitors’ attention to a few important trust-building reassurances. These trust signals include claims that the group has 1,400+ accredited investors, that the minimum starts at $25k, and that CapitalPad doesn’t charge an annual management fee.
Source: capitalpad.com
Emotional marketing isn’t usually seen as a trust-building strategy. Nonetheless, it’s essential to understand that it is an effective way to build consumer confidence — especially in industries where the consequences of making the wrong purchase decision are severe on a more personal level.
If you look at what consumers want from brands in the first place, you’ll find that many expect brands to understand their unique wants and needs. But perhaps even more importantly, they want businesses to demonstrate they care about their customers — something most companies aren’t doing too well.
According to recent data, 61% of consumers say most companies treat them as a number. This diminishes the customer experience, which is as important to shoppers as the products and services they’re evaluating.
The good news is that the answer to these trust obstacles isn’t developing a complex marketing strategy. It’s simply enough to cultivate and demonstrate customer-centric empathy.
In business, as in life, actions speak much louder than words — at least when it comes to demonstrating care and compassion. Still, there are a few design tactics you can use to ensure your target audience notices your brand’s commitment to understanding and meeting their needs.
For instance, you can employ visuals that reflect your target audience’s wants and needs. Another great tactic is to use real images of your team and customers. Alternatively, you can use video content to show your brand’s empathy. This approach is especially effective if you can present your audience with content that acknowledges their complex needs while providing them with valuable information or advice.
Bay Alarm Medical does a tremendous job of implementing the last of these tactics. The Caregiver SOS website section covers a variety of challenging topics that its ideal customers face every day. But where this business stands out in its ability to earn customer trust is that it approaches each challenge with sympathy and understanding, aiming to support its audience without disregarding the emotional impact of every decision they make while caring for their aging parents.
Source: bayalarmmedical.com
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Building brand trust — particularly in sensitive or high-stakes industries — may seem challenging at first glance. Especially if you’re trying to stand out against well-established competitors. But the truth is that brand trust isn’t achieved. Rather, it’s gradually earned across multiple customer touchpoints. Of course, using the right trust marketing tactics can make your efforts more fruitful.
Using design to build trust is one such strategy. Though not sufficient on its own, web design can do a great deal in helping you establish your brand’s credibility, whether that’s through attracting your prospects’ attention to relevant trust signals, highlighting particularly trustworthy brand characteristics, or emphasizing information that can remove or at least minimize your leads’ primary conversion obstacles.
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