Trust signals: what they are and why they’re changing

With ever increasing options, it’s more and more uncommon for a consumer to make a purchase without trust. A trust signal is something that helps consumers feel that your business is reliable and credible and that their chances of getting scammed, ripped off, or regretting their purchase are minimal. Typically for businesses, this can be anything from a customer review or testimonial to an industry award or accolade.

There are many different kinds of trust signals and generally the more you can use the better. Social proof like customer reviews can be a really great way for businesses to build trust by leveraging the power of other customers. Trust signals that feature trust by association — like a list of your most well known customers, recognizable news publications you’ve been featured in, or well known associations that have endorsed you — can also work very well.

All trust signals are not created equal — at least, they aren’t anymore

The problem is, as fake reviews have continued to make headlines and industry awards and accolades can be perceived as pay-to-play instead of earned, trust signals — or, at least, some trust signals — have come under a bit of scrutiny. Just having trust signals used to work well enough, whereas now you need to have credible trust signals. This is actually good news for both consumers and businesses using trust signals. This means that as consumers, we are more satisfied, and for businesses that effectively utilize the right trust signals, these signals can have an even greater impact.

Customer reviews are one of the most powerful trust signals, because they enable customers to see what the real customer experience is like. Knowing this, many businesses have chosen to use review providers that allow them to only show positive reviews, or only invite certain groups of customers — satisfied customers — to ensure that consumers only see the reviews they want them to see. Others will use providers that allow them to purchase fake reviews to inflate their numbers or incentivize customers to only leave positive reviews.

While this kind of behavior has always been unethical, many businesses used to get away with it. But as the average consumer learns to be more and more critical of what they trust online, they’re a lot better at spotting these kinds of practices. And government entities are cracking down on them.

Consumers want to know that anyone can review a business, not just the ones a company allows to leave one. And if they do see a fake review — which they’ve gotten much better at spotting — they are much less likely to ever shop with you again. The same can go for industry awards. It doesn’t mean they’re not good to participate in, it just means you need to be pickier about which ones you do participate in.

Another important shortfall to some of these trust signals — and some review platforms — is that they often don’t help with actually helping you improve your business. Getting a gauge on how trustworthy your brand is at any moment is great. Showcasing that to consumers is fantastic. But being able to do both of those things, while improving your business based on customer feedback ensures you’ll continue to build even more trust in the future.

Trust signals that work

Trustpilot is an open review platform, because we know consumers need to see a full and honest picture of any business’s customer reviews. We do a ton of work on deleting fake reviews from our platform and even helped consult the FTC on drafting rules combating fake reviews in the US. And Trustpilot has deep insights tools that help summarize review trends for you, so you always know exactly what to tweak and improve about your business to keep improving for your customers.

Learn more about how to increase your ROI with Trustpilot.