Visitors decide you’re legit when they can quickly find real photos, a phone number, named people, your ABN and licence number, genuine reviews, examples of your work and some guide to price. Miss several of those and they move on to the next result. People who find you on Google don’t know you. They’ve been burnt before, by a tradie who never showed, a clinic with hidden fees, or an online shop that took their money and vanished. So before they call, they look for reasons to believe you’re real.
Most of that checking happens in under a minute, and much of it is unconscious. Below is what visitors are looking for, roughly in the order they look, and what to put on your site to pass the test.
The 10-second check: is this a real business?
Real photos. The first thing a visitor sees is usually an image. If it’s the same smiling stock-photo team they’ve seen on three other websites, you’ve lost a little credibility before they’ve read a word. Photos of your own van, clinic, staff and work do more for trust than any headline. They don’t need to be award-winning. They need to be yours, and reasonably well lit. If you want them done properly, that’s what our commercial photography work is for.
A phone number that looks local. A landline with a local area code, or a mobile, shown clearly at the top. A site with only a contact form and no number reads as “we don’t want to talk to you”.
Signs of life. A copyright year from 2019, a “latest news” box with one post from three years ago, or a COVID notice still sitting on the homepage all tell visitors nobody’s minding the shop. Either keep those things current or remove them.
The 30-second check: who’s behind it?
Named people. “Our team” with no names is a missed opportunity. A photo of the owner with a short, plain bio (“Dave has been a licensed electrician since 2006 and lives in Alstonville”) makes you a person rather than a logo. For health practitioners, professional services and trades, this is often the deciding factor.
A physical presence. A street address and a map if customers visit you. If you work from home or on the road, a service area (“Ballina, Lennox Head, Byron Bay and surrounds”) does the same job without putting your home address online. Either way, the visitor needs to know you’re nearby.
ABN and business name. Put your ABN in the footer. Plenty of customers (and almost every business customer) will check it on ABN Lookup, which shows how long the ABN has been active and whether it’s registered for GST. An ABN that matches the business name on the site is reassuring. A missing one makes people wonder.
Licence numbers. For trades this isn’t optional. In NSW, building trade advertising must show the licensee’s name and licence number, and the NSW Government includes the internet in that. Customers can look the number up in seconds. We’ve covered the detail in showing your licence number on your website in NSW. Health practitioners can show their AHPRA registration, and financial advisers their AFSL or authorised representative number. This is general information rather than legal advice, so check the rules for your own profession.
The two-minute check: will they do a good job?
Reviews that look real. A handful of genuine Google reviews, with names and specifics, beats a carousel of five-star quotes signed “J, Ballina”. If you show reviews on your site, show real ones, attributed properly, and don’t cherry-pick so hard that it looks curated. The ACCC is clear that suppressing genuine negative reviews or publishing fake ones can mislead consumers. A 4.7 with a few honest complaints that you’ve responded to politely is more believable than a perfect 5.0. Getting a steady flow of those reviews is part of local SEO and Google Business Profile work.
Examples of actual work. Project photos with a sentence of context (“Switchboard upgrade, older home in East Ballina, replaced ceramic fuses with RCBOs”) show competence far better than “quality workmanship guaranteed”. Before-and-after shots work especially well for trades, landscapers and cleaners.
Clear pricing cues. You don’t have to publish a full price list. But visitors want to know whether you’re in their ballpark before they call. “Call-out fee from $X”, “Most bathroom renovations fall between $X and $Y”, “Initial consultations are 60 minutes and cost $X, with a Medicare rebate available” all filter out tyre-kickers and reassure the right people. Total silence on price often reads as “expensive” or “they’ll make it up on the spot”.
What happens next. A sentence explaining the process (“We’ll call you back within one business day to book a time to quote”) lowers the risk of getting in touch. We go into this more in calls to action: why “Contact us” isn’t enough.
The small things that make a site feel dodgy
Visitors rarely say “this site lacks trust signals”. They just get a vague bad feeling and hit back. These are the usual causes we see:
- A Gmail or Hotmail address instead of email on your own domain
- No padlock, or a browser warning saying the site isn’t secure
- Spelling mistakes in headings, or copy that’s obviously been run through a template
- Broken links, empty pages, or a menu item that leads to “coming soon”
- Pop-ups that appear before the page has loaded
- Prices or claims that seem too good (“Cheapest in NSW!”, “100% guaranteed results”)
- A logo that’s blurry or stretched
- Social media icons that link to Facebook’s homepage, or to a page with no posts since 2021
- No mention of the town or region anywhere
- Testimonials with no names, or all written in the same voice
Each of these is small. Together, they’re the difference between a call and a closed tab.
What to fix first
Open your homepage on your phone and pretend you’ve never heard of your business. Can you find a real photo, a name, a phone number, an ABN and some proof of good work within 30 seconds? If not, those are your first five fixes, in that order.
If the whole site needs that treatment, it’s the kind of thing we sort out as part of a website redesign.