March 27, 2024
At this point, you might be wondering exactly how these industries build their credibility online. It's one thing to just say have a good website design, but what exactly do you do to accomplish that?
Here are four ways you can make sure your website design is built to encourage credibility and trust.
Healthcare is one of the most regulated and trust-sensitive industries online. Clinical website design has to be more than just stock photos of smiling doctors and satisfied patients. It should be a clean and calming digital environment that emphasises accessibility, compliance, and a patient-centred UX.
Here are some specific trust-building tactics utilised in medical web design:
A clinical website should bring together UX, an awareness of regulations, and a knowledge of patient psychology. When these marry well, you're left with an interface that's meant to earn confidence quickly.
It is incredibly important that your users understand their personal data is safe with you, especially with high-stakes websites. While others may get away with just ensuring that their browser has HTTPS in it, other industries must go further. Display SSL certifications and encryption notices that explain how the user data is protected. In finance and legal sectors, you should also feature trust badges from cybersecurity providers or compliance frameworks relevant to the data you handle.
You should also offer clear and accessible privacy documentation. This should be written in plain language that anyone can understand, to underline transparency and legal compliance. If your industry involves consent forms, make sure those are prominently placed, as well.
Finally, you should be employing multi-step verification. This means when dealing with medical histories, financial data, or legal inquiries, you need more than just a simple CAPTCHA. Multi-step verification makes the user feel soothed that no one will be able to hack in and steal their information.
A visitor to a high-stakes website is doing more than just casual browsing. That user is performing an evaluation, and your website needs to give them the information that they're looking for. You need more than just a simple “About Us” section; you need to prove your expertise to them.
Here are a few different ways that can be done in high-stakes fields:
Another helpful tip: in clinical website design, you should include a section for “Our Philosophy” or “Our Treatment Approach.” This helps to contextualise the credentials you're showing and frame them within your real-world decisions.
People are social creatures, and base a lot of their decision-making on what trusted friends, family, and peers recommend to them. It then makes sense that nothing will build trust faster than the reassurance of someone else who has already been in the position they are considering putting themselves in.
However, within high-stakes industries, you need to take care to collect and display your testimonials in the right way. Anonymise patient feedback and gather explicit written consent to maintain HIPAA compliance. Utilise video testimonials and interviews to humanise the review better.
You can also rely on third-party reviews by linking to verified review sites. For a medical website, this may be Healthgrades, while Avvo does the same for attorneys. Google Reviews is a universal option.
Designing with trust in mind is fundamental for a high-stakes industry. Clinical website design, authority signals, visible security features, and testimonials all contribute to your first digital handshake with a user and potential customer. Make sure that the handshake is firm and inspires confidence, because if you don't prioritise making the user feel secure, your competitor will.
Clinical website design is vital because it creates a clean, calming, and accessible digital environment. This approach, with features like patient-centred content and regulatory compliance, reassures visitors about the practice's reliability and professionalism.
High-stakes websites should display SSL certifications, encryption notices, and trust badges from cybersecurity providers. They also need clear, plain-language privacy documentation and multi-step verification for handling sensitive user data.
To show professional authority, websites should include detailed bios for doctors or attorneys, listing their education, licensing, and professional affiliations. Showcasing anonymised case studies or outcome-based stories, and publishing expert-authored content, also helps establish credibility.
When using patient feedback, it is essential to anonymise responses and obtain explicit written consent to maintain compliance, such as with HIPAA. Using video testimonials can humanise reviews, and linking to verified third-party review sites adds another layer of trust.
Yes, while specific platforms like Healthgrades for medical and Avvo for legal exist, Google Reviews is a widely recognised and universal option that can be used across many high-stakes industries to gather and display feedback.
