"Trust me" Doesn't Work
You can't foster trust by just telling someone to trust you. In fact, it often triggers the opposite effect and makes people suspicious. Why should they be vulnerable and place their trust in you? This is as true in real life as it is online–even with your website. Depending upon your industry, over 50% of your website visitors arrive with a significant level of mistrust. So what do you do? Tell them to trust you and see if you can break 60%?
Your website needs to convey two things in order to foster trust: transparency and to put people first.
Transparency shows you have nothing to hide. Own your strengths and limitations before your competitors do it for you. That framing serves you and is still genuine transparency—it’s honest and refreshing, and it signals you respect your audience’s intelligence. Everybody wants to move beyond the "too good to be true" fluff and find the "real deal" they can believe in.
You also have to prove that you put people above profits. Not with a boilerplate “customer first” slogan, but with real evidence in every interaction. Because you can’t trick folks into believing you care; you have to demonstrate it with everything you do, from how you talk about yourself, explain your products, and support your customers. People have to see and feel how you value relationships over transactions.
Building trust is simple, yet difficult. Do it right and you won’t need to ask for trust. People will sense it and give it willingly.
If you want to show real transparency and a people-first mindset, start with layout and content that speaks to honest, human-centered design. Specifically, people want to see:
- Straight talk on data collection and security—what you collect, why you collect it, and how it’s protected.
- Clear sourcing and real-time verification—citing reputable experts, linking to third-party reviews, and highlighting genuine testimonials.
- Easy, intuitive navigation—so people don’t feel tricked or forced through upsells, pop-ups, or buried policies.
- Authentic “About Us” and mission details—not just feel-good fluff, but tangible ways you put customers and communities first (e.g., fair pay initiatives, charitable work, environmental efforts).
When your design quietly proves you have nothing to hide, you’re putting people at ease instead of pushing them away. That, more than any tagline, helps your audience feel confident that your actions match your words.
Two things will make sustained trust building content a regular practice within your team. First, it's realizing that trust building is a collaboration. You can't just create trust by yourself (e.g. "trust me" messages), your audiences participate and you should develop ways of listening to them. Second, trust building requires you to frame your content in ways that add transparency and puts audiences first. Those themes should be a filter you use when evaluating prospective content and seeing if it's worth publishing or needs retooling.
As with any behavior change, you'll want to measure and reward the things you want to move towards. Use something like our AUX Framework that measures things like the beliefs in your brand and its products and that will let you create a holistic experience that builds trust and moves people to act.
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