Build trust with these UX guidelines
Hey guys! As promised in my previous article, which talks about if we can gain the user’s trust through UX, today I am sharing with you guidelines on how to improve the user experience of your digital applications with as goal to gain the user’s trust right away
Based on the research I did around trust and my personal UX experience, I put together the following guidelines. Together they address the Fundamentals of Trust.
So, here they are!
1 — Clear structure and navigation that users can understand and relate to. The user should be able to find the information they are looking for as quickly as possible.
2 — Don’t overwhelm the users with content, but instead show the right content, the right amount of content, at the right time. This also goes for collecting their personal information. Let users see and feel the application first, and let them take small risks before fully committing to your application. If you don’t necessarily need all their sensitive data right away, let them get comfortable and be convinced first. Once they are motivated to take an action, like doing a monetary investment, ask for the necessary payment information.
3 — Show personality. Increase trust by letting the user know there are real people behind the brand. This could be done by for example surprising the users with something small that’s different like unexpected visuals or animations, or using UX writing and talking to a user as a person instead of a robot.
4 — Use others’ credibility. Highlight trustworthy companies and public figures, like Instagram Influencers, that are affiliated with your brand, or allowing users to sign up and/or login with their existing Facebook or Google account.
5 — Appealing design. In life, people generally trust a person that looks well taken care of more than a person that doesn’t. This can be applied to design as well. Users are more tolerant to small application issues if the design is appealing.
6 — Clarity and transparency. Be as transparent and upfront as possible about your company, your features, and what the user signs up for, and clarify what their personal data is going to be used for, and why it’s necessary. Another option is to introduce yourself and your team and tell them a bit about your background.
7 — Let users refer each other. In a survey from 2012, 92 percent of people trusted recommendations they received from people they somewhat knew. Make it easier for people to refer/invite or recommend each other, for example with (optional) referral codes on sign up. Those that were referred by others will already trust your application a lot more than those who weren’t.
8 — Attention to detail. “Small things like typos, broken links, and other mistakes quickly degrade credibility.” If users see we don’t pay attention to the details of copy within our application, how could they know we pay attention to details within other parts of our business?
9 — Use a design guide for consistency. With large and successful applications having usually more than a just few pages, it’s important that elements with similar purpose have consistent styling. These include but are not limited to typography, colors, space, grid, size, positions, and voice and tone. This is especially important if a company wants to work with multiple designers and a multitude of platforms.
10 — Familiar design patterns. People use other apps than just our app and know how to use these other existing apps already. Using existing design patterns and implementing them within our design will help preventing the user from getting confused.
11 — Keep text as understandable as possible. Especially for technical information, the Terms of Service, or mentioning laws, you can increase trust by sticking to terms the average user can actually understand.
12 — Buttons should do what their label says. Before the user clicks a button they should already be able to tell what’s going to happen.
13 — Explain errors. Tell the user what’s wrong in the case of an error with the website, or when they don’t fill in the correct password format.
14 — Predict concerns and address them. In cases where it’s possible for users to have worries within an application, it’s good to take away those doubts. For example when their payment info is required, the user could be reassured by telling them how the data is safely stored, or how many users have preceded them in completing this action.
15 — Be easy to contact. In case of a problem users should be able to easily contact you. A lot of applications nowadays have an in-app chat option, and websites frequently have a fixed chat button floating at the bottom right of each screen.
16 — Effective (natural and functional) transitions. When transitions between components or screens are unnatural, it leaves users surprised and confused. “In real life, buttons, controls and objects respond to our interaction, and this is how people expect things to work.”
And that’s it!
Apply these guidelines and I can assure you that the user of your application will feel a lot more confident using your app, as you will have gained (at least some) of their trust.
And if you do apply them, I would love to hear how it has helped you and your digital product succeed a little more!
— Arjen
