15 Blog Tips for Online Credibility

BJ Fogg, the world’s leading researcher on web credibility, says online credibility is about making your website trustworthy and knowledgeable…

“There are about 35 million websites on the Internet - by 2014 there’ll be an estimated 150 million, not including personal websites. With so many people online and so many websites competing with yours, if you can’t persuade Internet users to be loyal to your website then someone else will.”

His book has even received the official blessing from Jakob Nielsen himself. So what are the most useful blog tips we can do to improve the credibility of our blog?

1. Make it easy to contact you
2. Link to external websites referencing your organizations
3. Provide staff bios
4. Show photos of the office, staff, products etc.
5. Ensure that you answer any questions your site visitors may have, for example:
6. What is the purpose of your organization?
7. How much does your product cost?
8. What happens if I’m not happy with your service?
9. What will you do with my email address once I give it to you?
10. Back up your statements with third-party evidence - i.e. customer testimonials.
11. Publish case studies of your work.
12. Add a latest news section.
13. Consider a jobs page.
14. Offer a free quality newsletter.
15. Have a professional, consistent, highly legible look and feel to your website.

Filed under: Blog Design Tips, Blog Ethics, Blog Tips blog tip, blogging tips