Mind on Marketing

In the process of catching up with my email after a month of personal travel (visiting family, vacation, attending an art & meditation retreat) I’ve discovered some great new resources. I’ll share these in today’s and future posts.

I happened onto Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility, updated  in 2002. They may have been puclished several years ago, but they’re 100% relevant today. The guidelines were developed by Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab, headed by B.J. Fogg. Research was undertaken because web designers are expected to produce highly credible site, but there was little information on what causes people to believe information on one site but not another. They wanted to find out

• What causes people to believe (or not believe) what they find on the Web
• What strategies users employ in evaluating the credibility of on-line sources
• Contextual and design factors that influence users’ assessments and strategies
• How and why credibility evaluation processes on the Web are different from those made in face-to-face human interaction or other off-line contexts

To gather reliable data, they performed quantitative research, facilitated research and discussion, and collected public information on Web credibility. They also collaborate with academic and industry research groups and acting as a clearinghouse for this information. Researchers created a system to test world-wide users via the web, and developed the following  guidelines from the results of that research (my observations are in italics):

1. Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site by providing third-party support and links to that support. I would add that for businesses, that would include testimonials and credible endorsements using real people and real names.
2. Show that there’s a real organization behind your site. List a physical address, photos of your offices or listing of a membership with the Chamber of Commerce.
3. Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide. You can create credibility by association. Include experts on your team, contributors or service providers who are authorities. Be sure to provide their credentials. List affiliations with respected organizations and don’t link to sites that are not credible.
4. Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site. Show there are real people behind the site and in the organization. Convey their trustworthiness through images or text. You can post bios that tell about family or hobbies. –I welcome reader ideas and experiences on how social networking can be incorporated into a web site to build credibility.
5. Make it easy to contact you. Make your contact information clear: phone number, physical address and email address.
6. Design your site so it looks professional and is appropriate for your purpose. People quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. First impressions matter, and you have only a few seconds to make that impression.
7. Make your site easy to use — and useful. Sites win credibility points by being both easy to use and useful. Beware of catering to your company’s ego or trying to dazzle with web technology. Good usability builds credibility.
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 or reviewed. And frequent uploading of new content improves your Google ranking, too.
9. Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g. ads, offers). If possible, avoid having ads on your site. If you ust have ads, clearly distinguish the sponsored content from your own.
10. Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem. Typographical errors and broken links hurt your credibility more than you might imagine. It’s also important to keep your site up and running.

 More on Web credibility and the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab

BJ Fogg, PhD heads the Lab and also works in industry to “help good organizations use tech and new media to influence people… It’s a great time to be a psychologist who investigates how tech persuades people.” Fortune magazine listed him as one of the “10 New Gurus You Should Know.” Fortune says that his Big Idea is that mobile technology will be the most poweful way to influence consumers in the next 15 years. I think that, among many other mobile technologies,  the spectacular success of the iPhone and its thousands of apps clearly supports that view. I’m going to read his 2002 book, “Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do.”  He’s also written a new book, Mobile Persuasion.

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