Earning Trust with Theme Design

There are certain things about websites that will help instill trust when users visit the sites and certain things that will turn off visitors and make them wary causing them to click away and never return.

However, there are a handful of things that you can do to help set the stage correctly with your visitors to build trust.  These are mostly things that will be accomplished in the setup and choice of theme for your site.

Note. I could write a regular blog on the topic of building trust with your readers through the articles and topics you cover and the style you employ. That’s not really what this single article is about.

These items that can help your site establish and build trust include but are not limited to:

• Does your site work or is it broken
• Does your site have its own domain name as opposed to be hosted on a free blogging site
• Does your site bombard viewers with ads and pop-ups (note a clean design with strategically placed ads can be fine, but if your site is more ads than content there could be a problem)
• Does your site have a sitemap where viewers can get orientated
• Does your site include some method for contacting you?
• Does your site have a Privacy Policy, Disclosure Policy, or even Terms of Service (if you sell products or services)
• Does your site have valid html code, valid css code
• Does your site have multiple mis-spellings or bad grammar
• Does the site and theme look good

These are just a few.  They can be treated as a checklist and the list will likely grow continuously as you learn more, but they can and should also be viewed as goals.

There will be times when your site will achieve some of these goals and other times when your site may not.  But the more of these you achieve successfully, the better your odds of creating a good first impression, second impression and that will help to build trust with your readers even if they are not concious of the their own evaluation of your site!