Site visitors and customers take action based on a website’s credibility. Credibility for all intents and purposes is Believability. This article contains links to research that reveals methods for increasing the credibility of a website. In addition, there are links to improving the overall usability of a website. After reviewing the methods for improving website credibility, believability, and usability you are ready to begin implementing them directly into your project plans.
10 Ways to Improve Website Credibility
The following list is available here. The external guidelines page also contains descriptions for each method and a link to research in PDF format.
- Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site.
- Show that there’s a real organization behind your site.
- Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide.
- Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site.
- Make it easy to contact you.
- Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose).
- Make your site easy to use — and useful.
- Update your site’s content often (at least show it’s been reviewed recently).
- Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers).
- Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem.
This research is also available in PDF format here.
Usability and Credibility
Many of the methods for improving website Credibility overlap with Usability. I recommend reviewing Jakob Nielson’s article on usability testing at.
User Interfaces and Usability
Site usability can be improved through:
- Attention to detail when designing the user interface:
http://www.uie.com/articles/subtle_interaction_design/ - Performing usability testing – “The 5-Second Test”:
http://www.uie.com/articles/five_second_test/
References
- Fogg, B.J. “The Web Credibility Project: Guidelines – Stanford University.” Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility. Jun 2002. Stanford University. 10 Jul 2008 <link>.
- Nielson, Jakob. “Usability Testing With 5 Users.” useit.com. 19 Mar 2000. 10 Jul 2008 <link>.
- Spool, Jared. “Interaction Design: It’s All About the Subtleties.” User Interface Engineering. 24 Jun 2008. 10 Jul 2008 <link>
- Perfetti, Christine. “5-Second Tests: Measuring Your Site’s Content Pages.” User Interface Engineering. 9 Jun 2005. 10 Jul 2008 <link>.
Irony
At the time of this writing http://www.webcredibility.org/ has no index page. Site visitors are presented with a directory structure. Tisk tisk.