How do I make my website look trustworthy?
The signals people and machines actually use — most of which cost nothing and are missing from most small sites.
Be identifiable and be checkable. A real organisation name and address, a way to contact a human, named authors, honest dates, a privacy policy, HTTPS, and no broken or contradictory information. Trust badges and stock photography do the opposite of what people expect.
What people check without realising
Research on credibility judgements consistently finds that visitors decide within seconds and on shallow signals — and that the signals are the same ones that indicate a real organisation exists behind the site.
- Is there a real organisation? A company name, a registered number if applicable, a physical address. Its absence is the single strongest negative signal.
- Can I reach a human? A real email address or phone number. A contact form alone reads as evasive.
- Who wrote this? A named author with a real biography, not "admin" or "the team".
- Is it current? A visible date. A copyright notice three years old suggests abandonment.
- Does it work? Broken links, broken images and layout faults read as neglect and transfer directly to judgements about the organisation.
- Is it honest about limits? Sites that state what they do not do are trusted more than those claiming to do everything.
What machines check
Answer engines and search engines look for overlapping but more literal signals:
Organizationstructured data with a name, logo, URL and contact.Articlemarkup with a named author and bothdatePublishedanddateModified.- An about page describing who is responsible.
- Outbound links to sources, which make claims checkable.
- Consistency between the site and other places the organisation appears.
Things that reduce trust
| Signal | Why it backfires |
|---|---|
| Trust badges and seals | Anyone can paste an image. Users have learned this. An unlinked, unverifiable badge reads as decoration at best. |
| Stock photos of a "team" | Frequently recognised, and being caught costs more than having no photo. |
| Testimonials with no attribution | "Great service — J.S." carries no information and signals that real ones were unavailable. |
| No contact details | Reads as deliberate. It usually is. |
| Countdown timers that reset | Immediately recognised as false urgency, and contaminates everything else on the page. |
| Auto-playing audio or video | Universally disliked, and reads as a site that does not respect the visitor. |
A practical list
- Add a real about page: who you are, what you do, and who is responsible.
- Publish a working contact method — an email address that a person reads.
- Attribute content to named people with real biographies.
- Show honest published and updated dates, and actually update.
- Publish a privacy policy that describes what you really do.
- Serve everything over HTTPS with no mixed content.
- Fix broken links and images. Neglect is legible.
- Add
Organizationstructured data so the identity is machine-readable. - Remove unverifiable badges and unattributed testimonials.
What our audit reports about this
Every item below is measured directly, not inferred. Run it against your own site and the result names the exact rule or header responsible.
- Whether contact details, an about page and organisational identity are present and reachable.
- Whether authorship and dates are declared in machine-readable form.
- Whether a privacy policy and terms exist, and whether they are linked from the page.
- Broken links, broken images, and outbound link quality.
- Whether trust signals are verifiable or merely asserted.
For agents and scripts, the same measurement is at
/api/v1/credibility?url=yoursite.com —
see the API documentation.
Related questions
Do trust badges help?
Only if they link to something that verifies the claim. A static image asserting security or approval is unverifiable and increasingly recognised as such. If a badge cannot be checked in one click, it is decoration.
Should I show my address if I work from home?
You are not obliged to publish a home address. A registered office, a service address or a city and country is usually enough. Some jurisdictions require specific disclosures for trading entities — check what applies to you.
Does an about page really matter?
It is one of the most visited pages on most sites, and one of the few things both people and machines use to decide whether an organisation is real. It is also the page most often left as placeholder text.
Read next
Does my about page actually matter?
It is one of the most visited pages on most sites, and one of the few things both people and machines use to judge whether you are real.
ReadDo I need a privacy policy on my website?
Almost certainly yes, and probably a cookie notice too. What actually triggers the requirement, and why generated policies often make things worse.
ReadShould I put my email address on my website?
Yes. The spam argument is weaker than it was, and being uncontactable costs more than the spam does.
ReadWhat is structured data and do I need it?
Machine-readable facts about your page. Worth adding where it genuinely describes the content, worthless — and occasionally harmful — everywhere else.
Read