Web credibility has become a must in this day and age. With it, you can build a rapidly growing website that exponentially expands with only the sky as the limit. Without it, don't waste your time.



Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab has a web credibility project they have been working on as part of their study on Captology.

(Note: Per their site, Captology is "The Study of Computers as Persuasive Technology")

Below I go over my view on the 10 guidelines that they cover in the overview of their study.

1. "Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose)." You have an average of 8 seconds to capture your customers' attention. A large part of this is done graphically or by a major headline for your site. As times change, the design for websites has become increasingly important for web credibility.

2. "Make it easy to verify accuracy of information on your website." If you make it easy for people to verify accuracy of information, you gain trust and credibility in the eyes of your customers, making it faster to get them sold on your product or services. One byproduct is that it gives people the feeling of transparency in your company.

3. "Show that there's a real organization behind your site." Some ideas that come to mind are listing a phone number, showing pictures of the staff or offices or as they mentioned in the study or listing a physical address. You can show pictures and credentials of the management staff.

4. "Highlight the expertise in your organization." Many companies have very qualified personnel on board, hence them being in business. Don't hold back from showing the credentials of the staff. As a note, don't bore people with long list of credentials for each person right up front. List some and if a person wants to know more make it available to them.

5. "Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site" This can be done in many ways. You can show pictures, information and credentials of the people involved. One successful way of implementing this point is giving a little personal information on your staff.

6. "Make it easy to contact you" These are some ideas on how to implement this point.

a. Put your phone number in the upper right hand corner of your website, making it easy for people to find out how to call you if they need to.

b. If you have a contact form on your website, don't include many fields for people to trudge through, simply include a Name, Email, Phone Number and Notes field. Requiring a lengthy form means people will leave.

c. Having a live online chat. I have seen this used especially well with companies that sell many products. This way your customers

7. "Make your site easy to use -- and useful."

At the end of the day, functionality is more important than design. But I hate when I see people use this as an excuse to have BAD design. There are ways to create a website that is completely functional and that has great design.

One way this can be applied is in the navigation. Navigation should be easy to use and no surprises. I am totally in agreement with having an innovative website, but don't make the navigation too innovative. That is probably the most important part to have ?normal? on a website.

8. "Update your site's content often (at least show that its been review recently)."

This point is important for website credibility and search engine optimization. Google does keep track of when your website was last updated. So updated it often to keep everyone happy.

9. "Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers)."

I would say the biggest violators on this point are people that have Google adsense or any other such program on their website. In terms of credibility, every time I see ads like that any credibility they had has now dropped in my eyes.

10. "Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem."

It's worth it to get an editor for the content on your website if needed, just to make sure its perfect. Typos are the biggest example of times people violate this point. They are very much credibility crashers, just don't allow them.

The same applies to links to pages that don't exist and things like that.

I agree with these points and could see that they can be expanded as well. My examples of application are not the end-all ways to apply them. You should review them yourself and figure out all the ways that you and your company can apply these to your situation.

Rafferty Pendery

CEO Studio98