If you are a service based business you need your website to create, build or maintain a high level of trust. Whether you are a service for consumers (lawn care, electrician, chiropractor, mechanic) or a service for businesses (consultant, accountant, web designer, bank), you are after the user’s trust.

Building Trust With Your Website Content
When you meet with someone in person, there are factors that earn their trust. Some of the trust factors are appearance from how you are dressed, the way you talk, the way you listen, the examples you can give them of your success. You also have the ability to tailor the conversation to each personality type or issue to hit their hotspots, answer their biggest questions and ultimately earn their trust.

Online, it’s tough to adjust on the fly, but here is how you can provide content on your website to earn their trust. Below is a Trusted Web Content Pyramid that I will break down to give you the best chance or earning your website visitors trust and their business.

+ Case Studies – Top Level
This is at the top for me. Why? Because I feel that ultimately every user feels significant trust in seeing their same situation or problem addressed. Getting the user to think “That’s the same issue or need I have, they have what I need.”. Building this content our on your website is simple, just outline what the customers issue is/was, then talk about how your service solves it, mix in some type of visuals to compliment and reinforce your solution and close it with the outcome. Building out these case studies and and continually adding to them brings trusted content to your website.

In a brief example our web design portfolio and project blog posts are examples of this. We outline what the client’s needs were when they came to us, the services we put into their website and the outcome is available for viewing on the site and by clicking the link to visit the website for yourself.

+ Features – Mid Level
Many companies often mistake their features as the top content on their website. Although very important, it’s not the top. To get the most out of your service features and build trust, make sure you organize the information correctly and make it easy to read. Make use of bullet points or icons to separate out features. Keep descriptions short by providing the main feature and then limiting yourself to one or two sentences of supporting information. Provide details, specs or data that supports in anyway possible. Lastly make use of visuals to support your features. This can be in the form of photos, graphics or video.

+ Benefits – Mid Level
If anything from this post, remember this: can the marketing copy. People are tired of the “latest, greatest, biggest, blah …blah …blah”. Use website content that is straightforward and real to relay your benefits. Link to the case studies and examples you have provided on your site (top level) as they relate to the specific benefits. When possible, translate your service benefits into numbers. What do you save the consumer or business in money, time or efficiency? Finding ways to provide numbers give the user a clear message on your benefit.

+ Company Info, Visuals & Clients – Bottom Level
Yes these are on the bottom, but they do the dirty work of a supporting role. Having information on your companies history, awards, key staff and affiliations provides a personal touch and needed background. Highlighting staff that customers might interact with builds familiarity and that builds trust.

I touched on visuals earlier and I probably will do an entire post on this at some point, but at least provide photos of YOU. Showing your employees, your company, your vehicles, your office or anything else builds familiarity and trust. You can obviously take things to a different level in using a professional photographer or web company to shoot them or producing a video. Lastly list out your past customers, clients or even add a few testimonials. If you do put out some testimonials, I suggest adding a photo of the client or project, not just having the same boring 2 or 3 sentences everyone provides on their website.

There you have some simple ways to write and produce content on your website that builds trust and business. Put them to use or maybe share how you have already had success online by leveraging similar items to my pyramid or examples.

Colorado monogrammed gifts retailer, little dreamers, has big ideas for their new e-commerce website that went LIVE last week. Business owners Nicole and Paula sought a better web design to brand their unique monogrammed baby gifts and more and they needed it powered by an easy to use content management system and e-commerce solution. Five’s custom web design coupled with the SMC was just the right solution.

Some of the project details for this e-commerce website were:

• Custom web design
• SMC for content & e-commerce management
• Enhanced product detail page visuals, details & options
• Layered item option selections for monogram options
• Payment gateway integration with PayPal Pro
• Search engine optimization & SEO friendly URLs
• Email marketing integration & web analytics
• Project, usability & e-commerce consulting

The complexity of the monogram options definitely gave us a challenge (great work Josh and Travis) that led to a longer production schedule then expected, but the final outcome more than makes up for it. Many times during the process and content entry phases, little dreamer’s commented on the ease of use the SMC offers and their excitement over launching the new design. We’re excited to see how our work impacts their business too.

See the new little dreamers website for yourself, maybe even get a unique monogrammed gift for someone you know and if you are looking for a fabulous e-commerce web design, give Five a shout!

You need a change, you need control of your website. Maybe you have depended on a webmaster or an internal employee with some web skills to make updates to your website, but it no longer is the right method. You want things to happen quicker, you want to enhance your content and functionality and you’ve heard it can be done without knowing all that HTML stuff. You want a content management system and you’ve heard right, it can be easy.

Five uses a content management system called the Site Management Console (SMC), developed by our parent company, Intrcomm.

In simple terms it allows your organization to fully control your website, without web skills … add pages, edit text, photos, create online forms and more. On the complex side of things it can handle just about anything you throw at it from e-commerce to user accounts to database integration.

We usually integrate our SMC tool when we are doing a new web design or a website redesign, but sometimes we will just integrate an existing website design into the SMC. Below is an example of a basic conversion to our content management tool we just did this week.

Content Management System Integration Example
National Wall, a concrete wall systems company, had contracted another firm to build their first website just last year, but they soon needed control to update the site with more information. In reviewing their website, we could see they had more areas for improvement, but getting them control was first and foremost.

National Wall’s SMC enabled website has only been up for two days, but in that time they have already:

• Edited content on their existing pages
• Added a Contact Us form
• Added the KonCote product page (now a Koncote website)
• Added PDF documents for download
• Updated their News & Events page
• Uploaded new logos and project photos

Below is a screenshot of the SMC console for editing basic page content. As you may notice, it’s similar to creating or editing a Word document.

During the SMC conversion process we also corrected some of the site’s structure and usability issues making it a little more attractive to the search engines as well as users. There is still work to be done down the road on the interface design and SEO, but it’s much better off today then last week. If you have the need for control of your website, drop us a comment, a contact form or call us.