May 2004

Can your website be trusted?

Now that website accessibility is back in the headlines, I am reminded again of the fact that the debate is dominated by issues of functionality. It's all about the measuring and reporting of actions - the question is whether the design of a website excludes people from seeing or doing something.

The phrase 'user-friendly' used to be more, well, friendly. ('Your site is very user-friendly!' 'Oh, thanks!') Whereas now, if your site is not user-friendly, expect the wrath of the RNIB. And when legislation hits, even a fine.

So, if we address the accessibility issues, does that make for the perfect website?

That depends on its purpose. For businesses, there are sound commercial reasons to create a user-friendly website, other than to avoid being sued or receiving a bad press. For example, there's no point in having carefully-crafted calls-to-action if people can't find your contact details, can't see the links or if your transaction page repeatedly fails.

But let's say the accessibility housekeeping is in order. What's the next level at which a site may fail?

It may still fail because people are unable to trust the website. This applies equally to corporates as to small, unknown outfits. The reputation of the organisation behind the site does not alone guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.

Last October I was talking here about building trust - how and why we should be making it a central part of any online marketing strategy. Trust, after all, is about a person's willingness to risk time, money and personal data - never a given in the online environment.

Since then, I had a conversation with Don Norman of the Nielsen Norman Group about the same issue. He reiterated that usability is only a part of the 'user experience' online, and sometimes only a small part. Just as important are numerous other factors - including trust and credibility.

So how do we get people to trust what we say online? Can it really be quantified, or measured in a lab?

Clearly, trust is something that a person may or may not feel in response to certain triggers, or a combination of factors. The Customer Respect Group has gone some way to identifying those factors. They have identified six principles against which they can measure a company's performance: simplicity, responsiveness, transparency, principles, attitude and privacy.

It reads like a kind of code of ethics, but this methodology yields a rich evaluation of a website's performance. For marketers, particularly, this goes way beyond the limitations of a standard usability report.

If you're involved, as we are, with email newsletters, you'll be interested to see the latest report from the Nielsen Norman Group on the subject of 'user experiences' of email newsletters. The research finds that we have a quite different relationship with email newsletters than we do with websites. Apparently, we get attached to newsletters, we have an emotional reaction to them, in a way that just doesn't happen on a website.

If that's a bit too touchy-feely for you, let me reassure you that the report covers many other findings, and on the whole there are powerful learnings to be had here by email marketers (and would-be email marketers.) The report itself is a bit pricy, but the summary contains a lot of good information in itself.

I'd like to think that at some future date we'll see customer respect or some sort of 'trust quotient' becoming a regular part of the design of online communications, up there with 'usability'. What do you think?

Look out for more on Marketing Karma in the future about both website and email newsletter functionality, usability and 'trustworthiness'.