Doing too much to prove your credibility can backfire and trust completely. If you bring up the issue of trust with your reader, you’re forcing them to start thinking about the one question you actually want to avoid – do they trust you?
Getting it right
Getting the design right is essential. Getting the wording of page titles right is essential. Subtly reinforcing trust throughout your content is essential. Trust is the most important thing you do on your website.
Getting it wrong?
From from the point of view of your reader, trust has to be invisible. If they can see that you’re trying to engineer trust it makes the whole thing look like an illusion. Any trust that you’ve managed to build up will be destroyed.
Over on E-consultancy, Graham Charlton posted an excellent analysis of the use of trustmarks; E-commerce trustmarks: do they matter?
“Trustmarks are the images or logos that retailers can place on their websites to show that they have passed various security and privacy tests, and reassure customers that it is safe to shop on the site.” Graham Charlton
Graham suggests that overloading on trustmarks can actually be counter-productive by making the customer question why the website is so keen to reassure them.
