As a home service provider, your customers' buying experience requires trust. People need to know that the service providers they let into their homes will treat the space respectfully.
Fortunately, you can use your website to provide prospective clients with the information they need to know that your company is reliable and trustworthy.
This article will discuss how you can improve customer trust and visibility through your website with some simple design and UX updates. Before we dive into these tips, we’ll review why credibility and trust from prospective customers are significant for home service providers.
Why credibility is crucial for home service businesses
Selling home services differs from selling a product because it requires more trust. When you provide services inside someone’s home, you’re entering their safe space. This is where their family spends most of their time and where all their valuable positions reside.
With that in mind, you have to ensure that prospective customers know they can rely on your company to provide stellar services and respect their space.
Privacy and security are valuable to many people, so your brand’s website should assure them that your service providers operate with those in mind.
11 Web design tips for improving customer trust and visibility
Now that you understand why creating credibility for your business is essential, we will explore the design practices you can implement on your site to start building trust in no time. These tips range from simple design tweaks to more advanced digital marketing strategies.
Let’s dive in.
1. Feature testimonials from past customers
Social proof should be the foundation for building client trust, and testimonials from satisfied customers are an excellent form of social proof.
While written customer testimonials are great, video testimonials take things to the next level. With video testimonials, prospective customers see a real person sharing their experience. The human aspect makes the testimonial more relatable and trustworthy.
Plus, professionally produced video testimonials can feature a B-roll that showcases the results of your services. This is a great way to build even more credibility.
2. Add a review plugin
Text and video testimonials are great starting points for building social proof for your household services, but user-generated reviews published directly by past customers are also quite valuable. What’s different about reviews published by users is that the business cannot edit them, and they can be taken at face value.
Of course, people may share bad experiences, too. Although this isn’t ideal since the negative reviews will go right onto your site, what matters most is how you respond to the reviews. Publish a response asking the person to know you appreciate their feedback and give them a way to contact you so you can make it right.
This is not a time to be aggressive or deny the claims of dissatisfied customers. Although it can be frustrating to hear negative feedback about your business, you need to remember that your behavior reflects your brand, especially on public digital real estate like your website.
3. Be intentional about copy
Your website copy is great for engaging and building trust with prospective customers. It allows you to explain who you are, what you do, and how you do it. You can also use it to give prospective customers some insight into your company’s experience and history.
Creating engaging content on your landing pages can provide insight into your business’s mission. By giving your audience a look into your company’s “why,” you can help connect with them better.
On this note, it is important to ensure your copy is error-free. Typos in your site can hurt your credibility. Consider outsourcing your copywriting to a professional or, at the very least, hiring an editor to polish your copy.
4. Keep the brand cohesive
Another part of building consumer trust is developing a cohesive brand. When you create a recognizable brand, people are more likely to remember you when they need your services or if a friend asks for a referral.
Cohesive branding should include both visual and written elements. On the visual side, you should have a logo, typeface, and color scheme associated with your brand. From a written perspective, your brand should have a voice that aligns with your values and the way you want to be perceived by prospective customers.
Your branding should be incorporated into every customer touchpoint, from your marketing communications to your invoices and other follow-up documents.
5. Showcase your team
With services like housekeeping or handyman work, your people are your product. It may be helpful to showcase your team members on your website.
You can include a headshot and brief bio about your team members. Keep it simple with a line about their experience in the industry and a quick, fun fact about them. This will help break down the walls between you and your customers and build trust.
8. Offer a “guarantee”
Including a guarantee on your website is an excellent way to provide the reassurance a prospective client needs to hire your company to work in their home.
A money-back guarantee is a standard option. When customers know they can get their money back if they aren’t satisfied with your services, the barrier to purchase is greatly reduced.
Depending on the type of service, you could also guarantee a discount on a future service. You can get creative to determine what works best for your business.
6. Setup Google My Business
Google My Business is a great tool for building trust and improving your website's visibility. Although this isn’t necessarily a design tip, it is a crucial element of your website.
If you’re unfamiliar with it, your Google Business profile makes your business discoverable in relevant search engine result pages (SERPs). It also puts your business on Google Maps, so it’s great for local SEO.
It is completely free to set up a profile, so every business should put its business on the map with Google My Business.
7. Use search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical to visibility efforts for home service businesses. As we briefly mentioned, Google My Business is an excellent starting point for local SEO. But, you should also fully optimize your website for search.
Target keywords that your audience is searching forto help bring traffic to your website. You can implement those keywords into your landing pages and blog posts to boost your rankings.
Part of this is ensuring your site design is responsive for optimal viewing on all devices. This is where a professional website developer comes in handy. We’ll talk more about hiring a professional designer later in this guide.
9. Run paid ads
Running ads is an effective way to drive website traffic and enhance online visibility. Paid ads aren’t innately related to building trust with potential customers, but if your ads lead to landing pages that demonstrate your credibility, you’re on the right track.
You can run ads on social media platforms and search engines. The most popular ad platforms are Google Ads, Meta Ads, TikTok Ads, and LinkedIn Ads.
What’s nice about running paid ads is adjusting your campaigns to meet your budget. Plus, with pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, you only pay when you get results.
10. Tap into social media
Social media is another excellent tool for fostering trust with your audience because it gives them a direct way to interact with you. Social channels are typically updated more regularly than business websites, so they are excellent for keeping your customers updated on new offers, business developments, deals, etc.
This is how you can leverage social media to build trust with your audience, including:
- Pull feeds from your social media channels (like Instagram or X) into your web design
- Feature user-generated content (UGC) that features your brand from your follower’s social media pages on your site
- Direct users to your website from your social media profiles
No matter what you do, your social media efforts should align with your content marketing strategy.
11. Hire a professional designer
Even though there are tons of actionable tips you can implement yourself, an experienced designer will use these best practices right out of the gate. The techniques you’d spend extra time learning are likely built into a good designer’s standard process.
Of course, a web designer is an investment, but when you hire a good one, it’s worth it. This will save you time and resources, so you can launch and iterate your website much faster.
If you’re interested in hiring a professional design service to optimize your website, contact Cube Creative today to learn how to get started.
Improve your home services website today
Building client trust and enhancing brand visibility is crucial for creating a loyal customer base. Luckily, you can make quite a few tweaks to your website to make your home service business appear more credible, like offering a guarantee or running paid ads.
So, how will you improve customer trust and visibility with your website?
