Online Credibility & Trust

About the course

In times of information pollution and fake news, it is crucial to establish a credible web
appearance so your company won't lose users online by unintentionally sending the
wrong signs. This course gives an introduction to web credibility and provides various
practical, up-to-date examples.

What will you learn in this course?

What are the signs of a credible, trustworthy business web appearance?

How can you actively establish a credible, trustworthy presence for your company
online?

In this course, you have the chance to rethink and further elaborate your company's
methods and strategy to establish online credibility and trust. This course will also allow
you to discuss, interact and collaborate in an interactive way.

How long will it take you to complete the course?

We estimate approximately two hours of learning time, depending on how much you
want to engage. The course can be interrupted at any time and resumed later.

About the authors

This course was designed for the DigiCulTS project by Isabell Grundschober, a researcher
and instructional designer at the University for Continuing Education Krems. The project
is co-funded by the Erasmus Plus program of the European Union.

But now, let's get started with the first chapter of this course:

1) Information Pollution and Fake News

2) Understand Online Trust and Credibility

3) Establish Credibility Online: Transparency

4) Establish Credibility Online: Design & Content

Lesson 1 of 4

1) Information Pollution and Fake News

What is credible?
What is fake?

Sharing information with masses of people has never been faster and easier, but there are negative
side effects: "With the development of contemporary social technology, we are witnessing a new
phenomenon: information pollution on a global scale." (Council of Europe, 2017)

As a consequence, fake news has become a popular phenomenon within the last decade. It is
difficult for users to judge if a source online is reliable or not:
 "Faced with an overwhelming volume of information, the public
has the almost impossible task of determining what to believe. "

(UNDP, 2020)

What is information pollution?

Information pollution, on the one hand, means that there is a lot of information out there on the
world wide web. On the other hand, it also means that some users intentionally or unintentionally
share false, harmful information.

What types of fake news are there?

Everyone can post anything online and there is a lot of information out there on the world wide web.
Among them is also fake news. "Fake news" does not have a fixed definition and could mean various
types of false information.
If you want to learn more about information pollution and types of fake news, watch the video
below:

YOUTUBE

CIVIX Explains: Information Pollution

 CIVIX Explains: Information Pollution
When anyone can post anything online, the result is a lot of information. To
understand the problem of false and misleading information, it helps to define a...
VIEW ON YOUTUBE 

Match the types of fake news with the right definitions:

Information that is false and

Disinformation deliberately created to harm a
person or organization

Information that is false, but not

Misinformation created with the intention of
causing harm.

SUBMIT

By the way, there is a current example of information pollution, which we all witnessed: The
information pollution during the COVID-19 pandemic and its negative consequences. (UNDP, 2020)
Developing an online communication strategy
in times of information pollution

Among all this information pollution, how can you ensure that your company's online presence is
evoking feelings of trust and credibility in your future customers?

Not an easy task, but crucial for the success of your company's online communication and online
marketing strategy to establish brand trust. And brand trust is required in order to make sales. High
trust and credibility of your company lead to:

More purchases (71%)

Customers make recommendations to friends (61%)

Customers join a loyalty program (41%)

Customers give positive reviews or comments on social media (40%)

(See also Adobe, 2021)

What happens if you fail to gain trust and credibility?

Research conducted in the UK found that businesses face losing a large portion of their customer
base if they don’t prioritize trust: 71% of UK consumers say they will stop purchasing from a
company if their trust is broken. (Adobe, 2021)

To prevent customers to walk away and take their money with them and to benefit from all
advantages of trust and online credibility in customer relationships, we try to answer the following
question in this course:

“How to develop credibility and social trust online?”

Further reading and resources

Information disorder and freedom of expression

Learn more about information disorder online on the website of the Council of Europe.

READ MORE
Responding to COVID-19 information pollution
The UNDP guidance note gives insights into information pollution during Covid19 including
suggestions on how to take action.

READ MORE

Adobe’s "Future of Marketing" research

Learn more about the newest research results on consumer trust and retail by Adobe.

READ MORE

What lessons have you learned from this chapter?

Lessons learned

This first chapter introduced the notion of "information pollution". The rise of information

pollution makes it necessary for users to evaluate the credibility of digital

information. Developing a trustworthy online presence is absolutely necessary for small and
medium-sized enterprises to support the development of relationships with their customers.

Now that we've clarified the current context of information pollution and the challenges for
building trust and credibility online, we'll have a closer look at what web credibility actually is and
how we could support its development.

L a r n m o r e a b o u t s i g n s o f a t r u s t w o r t h y o n l i n e pr e s e n c e
Lesson 2 of 4

2) Understand Online Trust and Credibility

Show customers
that you can be trusted

Many things happen quite fast online. Users judge the visual appeal of your company's website at a
glance. It only takes 50 milliseconds. (Lindgaard, Fernandes, Dudek & Brown, 2011)

Judging the trustworthiness of a website takes a bit longer usually, but we should not underestimate
the power of the first glance online.
In an online world of information pollution, there are several signs of trustworthiness, which could
be detected rather fast, but all in all, it takes time to build trust in your company and your
company's services and/or products online.
Credibility is like respect: it has to be earned
You need to consistently show your customers you can be trusted, and that they can rely on the
quality of your information, products and/or services.
This can take a lot of time and effort:

"It takes time to lay the foundation for trust, and consistency to
grow it into a solid reputation based on credibility."

(Gregory, 2019)

It's all worth it: Trust and credibility are key when you want to build a relationship with customers, a
backbone to support making sales.

Signs of a trustworthy
online presence
Do you want to show your customers you can be trusted?
Do you want to build a trustworthy online presence for your SME?

If your answer is YES, we suggest following the ten guidelines for web credibility developed by
Stanford University. The guidelines give advice on how to build a web presence that visitors
implicitly trust.

10 guidelines of web credibility

1) Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site.

–
You can build website credibility by providing third-party validation (citations, references, source
material) for the information you present, especially if you link to this evidence. Even if people
don’t follow these links, you’ve shown confidence in your material.

2) Show that there's a real organization behind your site.

–
Showing that your website is for a legitimate organization will boost the site’s credibility. The
easiest way to do this is by listing a physical address. Other features can also help, such as posting a
photo of your offices or listing a membership with the chamber of commerce.

3) Highlight the expertise in your organization.

–
Do you have experts on your team? Are your contributors or service providers authorities? Be sure
to give their credentials. Are you affiliated with a respected organization? Make that clear.
Conversely, don’t link to outside sites that are not credible. Your site becomes less credible by
association.

4) Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site.
–
Show that there are real people behind the site and in the organization. Find a way to convey their
trustworthiness through images, videos, or text.

5) Make it easy to contact you.

–
It is crucial to share your company's contact details: Physical address, phone number, and e-mail
address on your website.

6) Design your site so it looks professional.

–
We find that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. When designing your site, pay
attention to layout, typography, images, consistency issues, and more. The visual design should
match the site’s purpose.

7) Make your site easy to use—and useful.

–
Our research shows that sites win credibility points by being both easy to use and useful. Some site
operators forget about users when they cater to their own company’s ego or try to show the
dazzling things they can do with web technology
8) Update and review your site’s content often.
–
People assign more credibility to sites that show they have been recently updated or reviewed.

9) Use restraint with any (external) promotional content.

–
If possible, avoid having ads on your site. if you must have ads, clearly distinguish the sponsored
content from your own. Avoid pop-up ads, unless you don’t mind annoying users and losing
credibility.

10) Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem.
–
Typographical errors and broken links hurt a site’s credibility more than most people imagine. It’s
also important to keep your site up and running.

Stanford Persuasive Technology published the ten guidelines listed above in 2002 and they have
held true since then. Still, some things have changed. Therefore, we updated the guidelines on web
credibility by using up-to-date examples and added an extra guideline "Show that you protect your
users' data".

In the following chapters, we will analyze the listed guidelines in detail.

Share your experience and
discuss with peers

We have created an online discussion board for you using Padlet so that you can share your
reflections and experiences with peers. We look forward to discussing the following topics with you:

What are typical signs online that a company IS NOT trustworthy? How do you identify them
as a customer? What are your personal experiences?

What makes a company's web presence credible for you as a customer? What are your
personal experiences?

Add your answers to the questions on our online discussion board below. All you have to do is click
the button with the "plus" sign to add your comment:

Trouble viewing this page? Go to our diagnostics page to see what's wrong.

UNIVERSITÄT FÜR WEITERBILDUNG KREMS 21D

 Share

 Online credibility of small and
medium-sized companies
Share your experiences and opinions about online credibility from a customer
perspective!

Wh t t i l i li th t Wh t k b

You can open Padlet in a separate browser tab here.

 You haven't used Padlet yet? It is a digital brainstorming and discussion space, where
you can write posts, comment, or like other postings. It is pretty user-friendly and
intuitive. You don't need to sign in to use it. If you would like to learn more about
how to use it, here is a brief YouTube-tutorial.

Further reading and resources

"Credibility: A Multidisciplinary Framework"
Read on by Rieh & Danielson (2007) to learn more about the credibility and trust research
conducted by Standford University.

READ MORE

"Online Consumer Trust: Trends in Research"

This article by Baumann & Bachmann (2017) describes the results of a literature review on more
recent research on the topic of online consumer trust.

READ MORE
 What are your takeaways from this chapter?

Lessons learned

In this second chapter, you took a close look at signs of credibility on the worldwide web .

You learned about the Standard University guidelines on web credibility and know the

fundamentals of web credibility to earn your customer's trust through your company's online
presence.

The next steps to take.

These 10 guidelines seem quite logical, but there are still challenges:

How can small and medium-sized companies implement these guidelines?

How to implement these guidelines with current technology and media?

We will give you some practical advice in the next chapters on how to implement the guidelines in
the daily business of your business to strengthen customer relationships, support innovation, and
sensing capabilities as well as make sales.

Pr a c t i c a l i m pl e m e n t a t i o n o f t h e g u i d l i n e s o n w e b c r e d i b i l i t y
Lesson 3 of 4

3) Establish Credibility Online: Transparency

Building credibility
and trust in practice:
Transparency

We will now take a closer look at the practical implementation of the Standford University
guidelines on web credibility No. 1-5, which are supporting transparency for customers and
therefore building trust and credibility.

In this chapter, we will give answers to the following questions:

1. How can you ensure that your customers can verify the accuracy of the information given in the
various online presences of your business? (Guideline 1)
 2. How can customers understand that there is a real, competent, and trustworthy team behind your
company? (Guidelines 2,3,4)

3. How can you make it easy for customers to contact and/or interact with you online? (Guideline 5)

1) Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information

on your site
How you can verify the accuracy of the information you provide to users online?
You could claim a lot about your products, services, or company values, but where is the proof?

Reviews, ratings and testimonials are powerful tools to promote trust in your company,
products and/or services.

Third-party validation
Your small or medium-sized business can benefit from well-known third parties with a good

reputation to gain the trust of users online:

"Third-party validation [...] provides 'social proof ' that we are not only relevant but also experts in

what we claim to do for our target markets." (Swift, 2017)

Not only well-known third parties but also less-known third parties support the

credibility of your business. Here are three practical examples of third-party validation for small
and medium-sized enterprises:

3 practical examples of third party validation

SSL certificate: "A website needs an SSL certificate in order to keep

user data secure, verify ownership of the website, prevent attackers
from creating a fake version of the site, and gain user trust."
(Cloudflare)

A trust badge for security and privacy control: They can verify that your site is
authentic and trustworthy. Examples are badges from McAfee, VeriSign, or PayPal. It
makes sense to investigate which seals or badges are most important to your audience.
Seals are of special importance in e-commerce or membership platforms.

Reviews & Testimonials: Word-of-mouth counts a lot, also online. Encourage your
customers to leave product or service reviews online and display product or service
reviews with pride on your website and on social media. Don't forget to make use of the
google review system and various review systems on social media.

“Insist on SSL when setting up your website! It is not only considered

standard nowadays and technically easy to implement, but also Google's
 algorithm rewards websites with SSL with higher rankings in the search
index.”

- Sabine Melnicki, Austrian web consultant at WebAhoi

2) Show that there’s a real organization behind your site

Let your customers know that you are a legitimate organization. List the following information on
your website:

Physical address

Phone number

Email address

Even if your business is only providing online transactions - this kind of information helps your
customers feel more confident that a legitimate company exists behind the website. People want to
know they can contact a business in the event of any problems.

Furthermore, you need to consider that providing information about your company on your
company's website is obligatory by law to provide transparency to your customers:
Legal notice

When writing the legal notice for your company's website you need to consider various laws and

regulations:

The laws and regulations of the country where your company operates from

when selling internationally: the laws and regulations of your customers'

countries

Use Google to succeed

Google looks for information to verify your business as legitimate.

It makes sense to check the already existing information of your business available on
Google and to manage a Google business profile with recent information about your business.
It supports your website's search engine ranking and helps users to build trust in your

company.

Google provides various information about enterprises: Location, business hours, website,
pictures of the physical store of products, and reviews. Don't miss the chance to use
Google to build your web credibility.

3) Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the

content and services you provide.
 Feature your team and partners online and share how they contribute to the business with
their expertise and competence.

Let people know that you have experts on your team and that you are working with highly

competent partners. Are you affiliated with a respected organization? Make that clear to your
users.

In the daily business of small and medium-sized enterprises, this guideline is actually closely

connected to guideline 4:

4) Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind

your site.
Show your future customers that there are real people behind the site and your company. Use
employee bios and use storytelling to make your employees relatable and credible. A "meet-the-
team"-page on your website is pretty valuable and powerful. The "meet the team"-page can serve as
a vehicle to communicate the expertise of team members as well as a look "behind the scenes".

5 characteristics of a successful "meet the team"-page (Sukhraj, 2019)

1 Make sure your team members are portrayed in a human and relatable way.

2 Show who the people in your team are and how they contribute to the company. Make
sure customers understand the competence, expertise, and value of the employees to
the company, its products and/or services.

3 Make your team accessible and provide email addresses or social media profiles to
open the lines of communication to customers as well as potential customers.

4 Use real team photos.

5 Use storytelling - but keep it short and interesting.

Read the blog post below to get inspiration from practice on how to create your "meet the team"-
page on your company's website:

IMPACTPLUS
 Best Team Pages: Check Out These 11 Examples (&
Why They Work)
Your mom? Dad? Pet corgis, Django and Diego? All of them are deserving, but when
people are racing against the clock to wrap up their speeches, it always makes me
happy to hear them thank the team behind the scenes.
READ MORE IMPACTPLUS 

5) Make it easy to contact you.

Like already mentioned in guideline No. 2 "Show that there’s a real organization behind your site", it
is crucial to share your company's physical address, phone number, and e-mail address on your
website, so (potential) customers can easily contact you.
But there is another hint for you, how to compel your customers to contact you:
 Call-to-action (CTA) buttons are usually very compelling - make use of it to support contact
and interaction with custeromers.

Call-to-action button (CTA)

"Traditionally, effective call-to-action buttons are easy to notice, even more, designers intentionally
create them that way so that people couldn’t resist clicking." (Design4Users)

Make use of CTAs to engage your customers to contact you, to interact, and ultimately to

make a purchase!

“A CTA can be much more than an opportunity for potential customers to

contact your company. I have a list of examples of CTA buttons relevant to
 small and medium-sized enterprises. Consider what works best for your
company.”

- Sabine Melnicki, Austrian web consultant at WebAhoi

Sabine's list of useful CTA buttons for small and medium-sized enterprises
Tick off all those examples of CTS buttons, which might be relevant for your business to support the
interaction with customers online:

Download a PDF

Sign up for a newsletter

Register for an event

Make an appointment

Fill out a test form

Configure your own product

Request a trial version

Request a call back

Visit a physical store

Order a test product

Register a user account

 Install an app

Compare products

Learn more about different kinds of CTA buttons

This blog post gives some good practices examples of CTAs on business websites.

READ MORE

Add-on guideline: Show that you protect your users' data

Some things have changed since 2002 when the Standford University guidelines were published. We
suggest an additional guideline:
Protecting our users' data and showing our users that we are respecting their privacy is an
important factor of web credibility nowadays.

Data protection is not only a necessity by law but also a sign of respect and appreciation towards
your users and customers. This supports our mission to build trust and credibility online - by
making clear that you are respecting your users' data.

In the EU, there are strict regulations on data protection: The General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR)
The GDPR checklist

The GDPR checklist provided gdpr.eu can help you secure your organization, protect your
customers’ data, and avoid costly fines for non-compliance. The GDPR checklist cannot substitute
legal advice by a specialized GDPR attorney, but it might give an idea of what aspects to consider
when it comes to data protection.

Deal Breaker: Creepy companies.

In Adobe's recent study (2021), 49% of consumers indicated that the following behaviour is most
likely to break their trust: The company tracks me online/on my mobile devices without my
permission, send emails/other communications, but I do not remember giving the company my
information.

Therefore, make sure that you communicate that your company is respecting data privacy and data
transparency!
Share your experience and
discuss with peers

We have opened a room for online brainstorming via Google Jamboard, where you can share your
reflections and experiences. It's a digital brainstorming space, where you can add your ideas using
virtual post-its.
 Let's brainstorm!

Take a post-it and share your experiences!

Imagine you are surfing on a company's website, which is providing a webshop. How do you judge if you
can trust the webshop and the connected company behind it? Which indicators of trustworthiness are
most important for you?

Open the Jamboard link, take pick a post-it on the menu from the left-hand side and

contribute by sharing your answer to the question.

 You haven't used Google Jamboard before? It's pretty user-friendly and intuitive. You
don't need to sign in to use it. If you would like to learn more about how to use it,
here is a brief YouTube tutorial.
 What are your takeaways from this chapter?

Lessons learned

There are some basic rules to follow when establishing web credibility in order to strengthen
customer relationships.

After this chapter, you know which actions to take to promote transparency on your website

or your web presence on social media. This not only includes providing verified and verifiable
information about your company, but also clear information about the protection of your users'
data.

You learned that it is important to provide contact information about your company. You know
about various ways to let users know that there is a real, competent, and trustworthy team behind
the company and its online presence.
The internet is not a one-way street. CTA buttons are a great way to compel users to get in contact
and/or to interact with you. In the next chapter, we'll have a closer look into the Standford
University guidelines no. 6-10, with a focus on the design and content of your website or your web
presence on social media.

L e a r n m o r e a b o u t g u i d e l i n e s n o . 6 -1 0
Lesson 4 of 4

4) Establish Credibility Online: Design & Content

Building credibility
and trust in practice:
Design & Content

In the last chapter, the first 5 out of 10 guidelines on web credibility were introduced. Now we follow
up with examples of how to implement guidelines 6-10, which are dedicated to the design and
content of your website or your web presence (e.g. on social media).

We will answer the following questions:

What to consider when designing a credible online presence? (Guidelines 6 and 7)

What to consider when publishing content and information online? (Guidelines 8, 9, and 10)
6) Design your site so it looks professional (or is
appropriate for your purpose)
We find that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. When designing your site, pay
attention to layout, typography, images, consistency issues, and more. The visual design should
match the site’s purpose.

“Know the rules before you break them. What web design conventions are
common in your industry? What colors, menu navigation, look & feel are
commonly used to convey what emotions? Show that you belong to the
industry and where you differ - also through your design.”

- Sabine Melnicki, Austrian web consultant at WebAhoi

7) Make your site easy to use—and useful.

Research shows that sites win credibility points by being both easy to use and useful. These are two
main core areas of the user experience online:

Usability: "A design is not usable or unusable per se; its features, together with the user,
what the user wants to do with it, and the user’s environment in performing tasks,
determine its level of usability." Therefore, usability is a measure of a user’s ability to
arrive on a site, use it easily, and complete the desired task.
 Useful content: "The website should include enough information in an easily digestible
format that users can make informed decisions. Keep Hick’s Law in mind here:
streamline your design to be simple. Use restraint."

An introduction: What is usability?

YOUTUBE

What is Usability?

What is Usability?
Here is the latest version. Audio included. . .only one Icon I can think of that needs
to be created/inserted. Any suggestions or comments? Feel free, ya'l...
VIEW ON YOUTUBE 

Differences between the physical world and the WWW

In the DigiCulTS course "Promoting digital transformation" we took a closer look at the differences
between communicating in the physical world (with familiar media) and communication online.
Here is a follow-up with a focus on usability and how it differs in the physical world compared to the
WWW:

YOUTUBE

Usability in the Physical World vs. on the Web

Usability in the Physical World vs. on the Web

In the real world, you can get away with causing customers a small amount of
difficulty, but on a website, visitors will leave at the smallest obstacle.#UX #...
VIEW ON YOUTUBE 

In the video above the user experiences of physical selling spaces and online
websites of companies are compared. Which statements are correct?

If the website is too complicated or hard to understand,

you will immediately lose customers.
 Websites need to be like a riddle for customers, so they
stay longer on the website.

In a physical selling space, customers are more likely to

"suffer" a bit more than in the online world.

A physical selling space might have a bad usability and

might be complicated (e.g. Starbucks coffeeshops), but
still be successful.

SUBMIT

When we show up to the present moment with all of our senses, we invite the world to fill us with
joy. The pains of the past are behind us. The future has yet to unfold. But the now is full of beauty
simply waiting for our attention.

8) Update your site’s content often (at least show it’s been
reviewed recently).
People assign more credibility to sites that show they have been recently updated. This does not
only apply to your company's website. Make sure that your company's information is up-to-date
and consistent on all online platforms your company is presented on, e.g. Google Maps, Facebook,
Instagram, LinkedIn, or TikTok.
Considering your company's website: Let your users know when you last updated the pages of your
website.

“There are different kinds of content. Some content types need frequent
updating, other content types are pretty static. Take some time for reflection:
For which content types is it important to provide frequent updates? When is
it enough to make sure the information is still correct? What decision
criteria do you follow for this?”

- Sabine Melnicki, Austrian web consultant at WebAhoi

9) Use restraint with any promotional content

(e.g., ads, offers)
Avoid having third-party ads and pop-up ads on your site, unless you don’t mind annoying users
and losing credibility.
 This is an example of third-party ads on websites. The screenshot is provided by WikiHow,
licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0).

No good impression on your future customers: Invasive ads

Any of the following types of ads should be avoided:

Ads that take up the whole page

Ads that require you to take a survey (or complete some other action) before
continuing

Ads that redirect you to another page

Explicit or suggestive ads (see also WikiHow, 2021)

10) Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they
seem
Typographical errors or broken links are hurting your website's credibility. Professional
proofreading and regular checks of all paths on your website are necessary to improve the user
experience and to win the user's trust.

This is an example of bad spelling on websites. The screenshot is provided by WikiHow,

licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0).

Bad spelling? Sings of a poor source.

You should avoid a large number of poorly-spelled (or missing) words, generally bad grammar, or
awkward phrasing.
How to solve the problem?

You don't need to be a spelling bee to have an online presence without typographical errors.

There are technological solutions available, like the free AI-powered writing assistant Grammarly or
the multilingual grammar, style, and spell checker languagetool.org.

Further reading and resources

WikiHow: Find if a website is legitimate

WikiHow published guidelines for users on how to tell if a website is legitimate. Also good advice for
your and your website.

READ MORE
Enhancing usability by using interface design patterns
These user interface design patterns are recurring solutions that solve common design problems -
resulting in "good" web design and high usability.

EXPLORE PATTERNS

What are your takeaways from this chapter?

Lessons learned

This chapter focused on giving up-to-date examples of how to implement the Standford

University guidelines on web credibility, no. 6-10 to support your mission of gaining your

(potential) customers' trust online.

There are basic rules to follow regarding the design and the content of your website: Professional

design with high usability, relevant and updated content, no external ads to other companies, and
avoiding typos at any cost.

We hope you enjoyed this introduction to establishing

trust and credibility online!

We highly appreciate your feedback, so please leave a comment about this course in our feedback
padlet. Thank you!
 Thank you for checking out the DigiCulTS course. I hope you found some useful takeaways
for your professional practice.

Contact information

This course was designed for the DigiCulTS project by Isabell Grundschober, a researcher at the

University for Continuing Education Krems. Feel free to connect with Isabell on social media to
share your experiences about this course or discuss the course topics:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/isabell.gru/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/isabellgru/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isabellgru/

Isabell's Blog: https://isabellgru.eu/