It’s important when developing a new application or a website to make it look and feel trustworthy to your potential users.
But the question lies pondering over ‘how can developers and designers create and design trust’?
There is an ultimate fact that there is a boost in your online presence, rise in business, and reputation if you create well-trusted, website or app as it draw more users towards your work.
So that’s what is focused upon in this article over the factors which will enable you and your website or app to gain the trust of your users.
What do you mean with “trust”?
Let’s begin with the term trust and how is it relatable to software development? As per the definition by the Oxford English trust is:
Trust (noun) Firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something. ‘relations have to be built on trust’.
For every situation may it be a family relationship or a customer relationship making false claims, make a mountain of your abilities or scope out of a molehill, or initially wrongly stating costs or terms and conditions frustrate your user real bad and consequently the claimer loses user trust and usually their future business. If your website or app claims to offer a service and it turns out to be something different than your claims then your user’s trust levels are ultimately going to drop even below the ground therefore it’s important to ensure the software for that service is working perfectly. Hence the definition of trust can fundamentally be applied to the software development rather your storage apps crash or wipe your entire user’s data trapping them all over badly.
Your website or app should:
- Be honest– don’t claim about something you don’t have.
- Be explicit and precise when communicating. Talk as straight as your customers talk.
- Privacy is important for everyone– respect everyone’s privacy and make sure not to disclose any personal information like payments, credit card numbers, email addresses, bio data etc and also reassure your users that their security won’t be compromised.
How do you communicate trust?
The way you communicate is what inspires a trust between a user and a product.
Making an app that responds your users in different ways assures reliance to your users.
Trust through user experience.
To build a certain degree of flexibility into your product a UX (user experience) design is an effective way to make user feel as if they are part of the overall experience. For example, in case of poor mobile reception it’s a good approach to create a pop-up message apologizing to the user or any sort of error message as per requirement to reduce response time and acknowledge that app is working over the requested task. If you have both an app and a website, don’t forget to check the responsiveness, compatibility and communication between the two is efficient and comprehensive.
Trust through specification and transparency
Terms and conditions are the effective tool to communicate trust in a way that they creates a proper layout about what is to be expected from your customers and your own organization. data protection polices is a part of terms and conditions which should be easily downloaded to because hiding them away makes it look something suspicious to your customers.
Social trust
Reviews of app drastically affect its impression in the market.
For worst case scenarios you might receive a negative review which sometimes might be your opponent’s accomplishment or user’s real bad experience yet in either of the cases there is constructive lesson for you to apply UX capabilities on it to rectify the mistake. This may become an annoying and time-consuming task but ignoring a user identified problem, damages trust and thus making you lose your customers. However when you resolve your problem that transform your software into its next update, now it’s a time to highlight the ‘bug fixes’ to illustrate your dedication in providing the best possible service to your users.
How can you test how trustworthy your product is?
Quality assurance domain allows the software utilities to analyze their claims related to their software before going live. Most of the software houses have their own complete department that is responsible for tracking bugs, polishing quality and checking the fulfillment of requirements however if you are working as a freelancer you would find various bug tracking and software assessment products that allow you to test the trustworthiness of your app or website. As per your quality prediction, anything wrong with your website or app will be identified in a review of your users immediately after your launch.
On getting reviews from your users it’s better to treat them individually to ensure your quality related to your product and support. Always remember that your first is your last so launching a product with the important specifications and leaving a least important specification for the rest of the version along with listening and responding to the feedback is the best possible practice in gaining trust.
User Acceptance Testing (UAT) also provides support for testing the acceptability of your product to your users. It simply provides a platform to test-drive usability of your website or app to get feedback from real users which can help you identify areas which could be improved and fix any bugs any which you and your team may not have recognized while the same software. But that’s a rare thing because the quality assurers in your organization have so far gone experts in their domain to find and work out a problem yet the feedback basically helps in improvising your product.
Are there elements of trust in the design?
Off course a good design is absolutely a part of trust because a reasonable template follows up a chain from accessible to user-friendly navigation. A complicated and ambiguous design will always repel user to visit your app or website.
Well it was about appearance of your product if nobody wants to compromise over the appearance then how you could expect that one would compromise over the internal structure of a product concerning protection of sensitive information. Violating privacy has been an issue from ages and people have been trying to take several innovating measures to safeguard their users through restoring their trust regarding their details. So do not forget to make your terms and conditions easily accessible, comprehensible, and explicit about what your company intends to cover for your user.
If you’re developing an app, ensure users have to confirm they want automatic updates. If you’re launching a website, make sure your visitors aren’t forced to download anything unless they expressly select to do so.
They need to be easy and convenient to use (e.g. have a ‘keep me logged in’ feature, or remember items previously put in your basket from an earlier shopping session), aesthetically pleasing (take your time getting that perfect look for you and your company), and stable (no one likes a website which crashes every few minutes).
According to Microsoft, there are several things to look out for when assessing the trustworthiness of a website. Users should:
- Confirm that the web address begins with HTTPS.
- Look for a lock in the address bar (this indicates it’s harder for hackers to view your movements).
- Check the seal of approval (this validates your authenticity).
Apps on the other hand, still have a long way to go in terms of development. There is still a general lack of communication between the user and the software itself once the app has completed its installation. Perhaps yours will be the one to break that mold.
Communicate as much as possible.
Additionally, the shortcut to gain trust is to use reputable distributor’s names: like Apple’s App Store and Android’s Google Play Store. On creating a trust leading to positive reviews under your app will also increase downloads ultimately inspire user confidence hence built trust.
Interacting a user in a best possible manner and showing your presence every time they need help while navigating your app is how trust is created and designed for new and existing software. A great reputation along with an expanding customer base is a consequence when you successfully built a trust as you see people coming to your site or downloading your app continuously. We hope this article identified the importance of trust for software and how to achieve it.
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