What’s the most important job of any webpage?
Letting the visitor know what you do.
What’s the second most important job of any webpage?
Letting the visitor know how well you do it.
The first part is easy.
The header and the navigation labels tell the visitor what you do. In a split second, they answer the question “Am I in the right place?” Just don’t get too clever or overly branded in your <h1> header and you’ll be fine.
The second part is hard.
You need to show proof that you’re good. You need to make a case by showing evidence that your brand is a trusted option. If you don’t, your conversion rate (and the CTA clickthrough rates) will be low.
First, a quick credibility check…
Look at your homepage or any of your key pages. Now ask yourself: if a start-up competitor formed today, how much of this page could be on their site? In other words, how much of your page is unique to your brand? Twenty percent? Fifty percent?
Often, evidence is the only difference between you and a just-born start-up.
On many of the top-converting webpages, one-third to one-half of the page is evidence. On Orbit’s own homepage, 45% of the pixel height is evidence. The page is 1600 pixels high and 700 pixels of that height is proof.
You can add all kinds of evidence to your webpages.
Some are qualitative like testimonials; others are quantitative like ROI metrics.
Some are internal validation that you generate yourself; others external validation and come from third parties.
Using those factors on a matrix, let’s plot the various types of webpage evidence:
Now we’ll look closely at each. Here’s the list of the 14 credibility builders that appear on webpages. At the end of this post, we’ll share an AI audit prompt for evaluating the use of evidence on your pages.
14 types of evidence on web pages
Evidence is persuasive for a variety of psychological reasons. Some are social proof and trigger the conformity bias (“Others like them? They must be good.”) Others associate your brand with trusted players, triggering the halo effect and the authority principle. Others work because they are visually prominent, triggering the Von Restorff effect. Trust badges stand out.
They are all forms of differentiation. They separate your brand from the competition.
Here are 14 of the most common types of evidence found on webpages, along with tips for how and where to use them.
1. Testimonials
Let’s start with the basics. Testimonials are powerful because they change the messenger for those key messages. When you say it, it’s marketing. When they say it it’s social proof. Really, anything within quotes is more credible. Quotation marks are the most powerful key on your keyboard.
Here are some tips from our guide on effective testimonials.
Add the name, face, job title, company name and logo. If they won’t give permission to use their name or company, so be it. Use the testimonial anyway. Anonymous testimony is better than no testimony at all. Your visitor may understand and appreciate that you respect the anonymity of your clients.
Use testimonials with keywords in them. A keyword-focused testimonial helps both traffic and conversions. Cheese and mousetrap!
Make the testimonial a video.
Avoid sliders, because they hide all but the first testimonial. Instead, stack your testimonials vertically. Because scrolling is easier than clicking.
Avoid making a testimonials page. Testimonials pages tend to get skipped. Instead, put them on your most visited pages. Ideally, the testimonial appears next to the assertion it supports.
Avoid making “what our clients say” as the subhead above the testimonials. Why make the most visually prominent test generic and vague? Instead, make the most compelling few words in the testimonial into the subhead.
If they slow down and read or watch the testimonial, great. If not, they still saw the best part of the testimonial.
Nancy Harhut, Author of Using Behavioral Science in Marketing
“Choose a testimonial that expresses some doubt. Your readers have doubts, that’s why they’re checking out the testimonials. If they see one that starts with their concern and ends with it being resolved, they’ll find the reassurance they need.”
Joel Klettke, Business Casual Copywriting
“Try to choose testimonials that go beyond a platitude, like “They’re great!” and instead choose testimonials that speak to specific parts of your value or offer, especially if you’ve recently made a claim about what you can deliver or how you are different. And you can bold these parts of the testimonial to draw attention to them for scanners and quickly support claims.”
2. Client logos
For service providers, these are a strong form of evidence. They stand out with color and prove you’ve been trusted by other brands. The more well-known their brand, the better. But even logos of unknown brands can build confidence. Put these up high on your most popular pages. That often means above the fold on the homepage.
Logos can also build trust in a content program. Here’s how Jay Acunzo uses logos to promote his newsletter.
3. Third-Party reviews
Stars stand out. And reviews aren’t just for ecommerce. B2B service providers get reviewed on Google, G2, Clutch, Trustpilot, Capterra and Glassdoor.
Most review sites have badges that show the aggregate star rating of those reviews. Adding this badge to your page turns your reviews into a trust seal. If they don’t offer a badge, have a designer simply make an image. Put it high up on a high-traffic page.
Here’s what it looks like on our site:
Nancy Harhut, Author of Using Behavioral Science in Marketing
“And don’t worry if you don’t have 5 stars. A Northwestern University study found that people are more likely to purchase a product with an average star rating between 4.2 and 4.5 than one with 5 stars. A less than perfect rating is more believable.”
4. Case studies/success stories
These little stories explain the problem you solve and the impact of the solution. Yes, they can convince your visitor. But they have another hidden purpose: case studies help your visitor convince other people on the buying committee. Often in B2B, your website visitor isn’t the only decision maker.
Here are a few tips for more effective case studies:
Link to them thoughtfully from relevant pages. They’re job is to support those key pages.
Make them webpages, not just PDFs. The PDF version is just an alternate, print-friendly version. PDFs are number nine on our list of things to remove from your website.
For the case study title, don’t just name it after the client. Your visitor may not recognize the client name. Put the impact statement into the title of the case study, so visitors see the impact, even if they don’t click.
Joel Klettke, Business Casual Copywriting
“Consider testing headlines that include ‘How’ such as ‘How to get X result, how X client achieved Y result, etc.’ A teaser that feels like the lead is going to get something prescriptive, detailed, or a recipe for success can be an attractive click through.”
5. Impact Metrics and Data
Simply show the quantifiable impact of your work. Use whatever ROI data you can find. Measure the average value across your clients and projects (time saved, dollars earned, etc.) and put it in a pageblock.
Make it relevant to the page and the content nearby. For example, a page that showcases your work for an industry shows stats for your work in that industry. Here’s another example from a page on the Orbit website.
6. Awards
Show ‘em if you got ‘em. Putting that little badge on your site may be the main benefit of winning the award. That badge is a thousand times more visible than the trophy in your office. Here’s what the awards pageblock looks like on our website. It’s very simple.
Nancy Harhut, Author of Using Behavioral Science in Marketing
“Awards trigger the Authority Principle, which is your prospects’ instinct to trust what authorities say. In this case, they find it more believable than when you say the same thing yourself. Because your prospects expect you to say you’re good. But when an outside expert does by recognizing you with an award, that carries more weight.”
But don’t hide your award badges on a separate awards page. An awards page is nice, but it’s probably not a popular page. The key is to make the award visible..
Put your best evidence on your highest-traffic pages. Put billboards on highways.
Where to put your trust badges
Remember, if your site is optimized for search, you have many pages optimized for many phrases. So lots of qualified visitors will never see your homepage. So put trust seals all over the place. Here are seven places to put trust seals:
High on the homepage
Service pages
About Us page
Contact Us page
Awards page
Website footer
Email signatures
Of course, if the award is specific to a certain type of visitor, put it where they’ll see it. Your. “Great Places to Work” award goes on your careers page.
7. Expert endorsements
An endorsement is simply a testimonial from someone whom your prospect knows and trusts. It could be a well-known subject matter expert or influencer.
They trigger a cognitive bias called the halo effect. The visitor has a positive impression of the influencer, which rubs off on your brand.
Melanie Deziel, Author of Prove It: Exactly How Modern Marketers Earn Trust
“Consider your influencer’s area of authority and the content of their endorsement when choosing where you’ll place it on your website. For example, a quote about a specific transformational employee interaction could signal customer satisfaction on your home page, but it could also provide evidence for your career page, corroborating claims about the impact your team members have on their community.”
Paid endorsements are obvious advertising. But content marketers often collaborate with influencers on podcasts, events and webinars. These collaborations often lead to long-term partnerships, where the brand and the influencers are co-creating and co-promoting content together over time. In this context, a quick testimonial quote from the influencer is perfectly natural ….and an endorsement is born.
From networking to collaboration to partnership to friendship to endorsement. It happens everyday. So keep networking. Collaborate whenever possible. And don’t be shy asking a semi-famous friend for a favor.
8. Certifications, Accreditations
More opportunities to add a trust seal: certifications, licenses, accreditations, standards compliance or any other credential. If your brand has any of these, add the badge to your key pages.
You might not think the certification is impressive, but it’s not about you, it’s about your visitor.
Orbit is a certified B Corp and we put the badge in our website footer so you can see it on every page. We’ve been certified for more than 10 years, so we mentioned this near the trust seal. We also made a page all about it. It’s an example of how to go beyond the badge.
9. Media mentions, event participation
One of the biggest benefits of a press hit? Adding the “as seen in” logo to your website. Press is fleeting. It comes and goes in a day. But that logo is durable. You can keep that logo on your site for years
Can’t wait for the press to call? Pitch a guest post to a blog that your prospects trust. If you sponsored an industry event, add the event logo to your site. Any logo of any third party can help.
10. Years in business, size of operation
I’ve met big companies with global reach that look like little startups online. Why? They are missing credibility elements. They fail to mention longevity and scale.
How long have you been in business?
If yours is an established firm with years of history, put this into your web copy. Better yet, make it a subhead. Best of all, use it in an H1 header on your about page.
Do you have many locations?
If yours is a national or global firm, make sure that’s obvious to visitors. Don’t wait for them to click on your contact page to show that you have offices everywhere. Make a page block showing your many locations. Maybe with a map. Add it to every page just above the footer.
Your years in business, your geographic reach, even the size of your team. These are all ways to set your brand apart. But it only works if you make these basic facts obvious at a glance.
11. Number of happy clients, successful projects, etc.
Next, we’ll look for opportunities to show the scope of our work and the scale of our impact.
How many companies has your brand worked with?
How many businesses have you helped?
How many projects have you done?
Generally stories (qualitative evidence) are more persuasive than stats (qualitative evidence) but your website has to speak to everyone. For some visitors, one look at that big number and they’re a believer.
Look for the big numbers. They‘re different for every business in every industry. Check out these examples…
Melanie Deziel, Author of Prove It: Exactly How Modern Marketers Earn Trust
“If you’re just starting out and don’t yet have hundreds of clients or thousands of projects to point to, look for other relevant data points that can signal the scale and impact of the work you do.
If your civil engineering firm hasn’t paved an impressive number of roads yet, you might say: ‘The roads we’ve paved in Raleigh provide safe transport for 70,000+ drivers each day.’
Or if your government software only has a few contracts, you might frame it this way instead: ‘Our software helps Wake County serve its 1.1 Million residents.”
12. Team credentials
Think about your staff. Start with those front line team members and leadership. What credentials do they have? Ask around. Anything on their LinkedIn profiles? Take a look. See anything interesting? Any certifications, advanced degrees, publications, memberships or patents?
Now look at their profiles on your website. Do you have a page for each person? Do these bio pages showcase all of those credentials? Do they sparkle with credibility? If not, keep polishing them. These pages probably get a steady stream of traffic. They may even rank for those people’s names.
Sometimes, the team tenure is a credential all its own. Here’s how we showcase the longevity of the team on the Orbit team page.
13. Association memberships
Being a member of an association can have some digital marketing benefits. If the association has a directory that links to members or a blog that members can write for, that’s good for SEO and referral traffic.
The badge is the other benefit. Add the logo of the association to your website and you have another badge. Add it to a trust seal pageblock or put it in the footer. It shows you business is part of a community.
14. Charitable contributions
This is a different kind of evidence. Rather than prove you do good work, it proves you’re doing good in the world. It shows you care.
Charity work is evidence that your brand is ethical and trustworthy. It may also align with the visitor’s values for CSR (corporate social responsibility). Being charitable can trigger both the halo effect and the reciprocity bias.
Brands don’t do philanthropy to improve website conversion rates.
But brands that do philanthropy shouldn’t miss the chance to showcase this in their marketing.
Here’s a quick example: every year, together with our friends at Digital Third Coast, we donate our services to a Chicago-area nonprofit. We’ve done this for 12 years and we call it Chicago Cause. We don’t do it for the marketing benefits, but we do highlight it on our website with a nice pageblock.
Beyond the trust boost for visitors, a program like this can generate a bit of social media buzz, get attention from journalists and attract links from blogs. But the real reason to do it is to give back. Pick a cause that aligns with your team’s values and go make a difference.
More types of evidence…
The list goes on. Beyond these, you can build trust by highlighting industry research reports, Gartner Quadrants and Forrester Wave reports. You can showcase patents, give live demos and offer guarantees. In your content program, you can make your blog look more credible by showing the number of email subscribers or social media followers.
Add anything that shows your brand is legitimate, and then…
Test your evidence with this AI prompt
A good way to measure the credibility of your page is to count the number of unsupported marketing claims. Literally read the text and count the number of assertions the page makes. These are typically the benefit statements. Next look at the supportive evidence. Does it match up with the claims? Are all the claims supported?
There’s an audit prompt that makes this quick and easy. Load this in your favorite AI tool along with a full-page screenshot of a key page. It’s important to use a screenshot rather than a link because we want the AI to “see” the page, including those trust badges.
You are a conversion optimization expert, skilled at using evidence to support marketing messages. The following are types of evidence that can be added to webpages: testimonials, client logos, third-party reviews, case studies, impact metrics, awards, expert endorsements, certifications/accreditations, media mentions/event participation, years in business/size of operation, number of happy clients/successful projects, team credentials, association memberships, charitable contributions.
The attached image is a screenshot of a webpage. Rate the extent to which the page does and does not use supportive evidence. Which marketing claims are unsupported? Show your thinking.
[attach a full page screenshot of a page in the persona chat, or attach the persona]
The AI will rate the use of evidence on your page. It will list strengths and weaknesses. It will count how many of your claims went unsupported.
How did your page do?
Bonus prompt! Try this as a follow up…
How well does the page align with the advice found on the Orbit Media blog?