If you haven’t already, read the intro & summary which explain why I wrote these thoughts down in the first place.
Trust has become an overused and hollow term, like transparency and authenticity. Trust by very nature can’t be explicit, just like “trust me” is a phrase that likely indicates the opposite.
The most well-designed site feels soulless if we don’t trust the brand. The core responsibility of an online experience is to make a customer feel a connection with the brand, a connection in an otherwise cold and digital space. Our role as a team is also to educate the brand in all the ways they can confer trustworthiness.
And just like any other principle - the establishment of trust is a requirement that doesn’t live in one single identifiable place (like a customer review). Trust is stitched together through the way you photograph your product, the tone of your error-copy, the rules of your return policy, how you design and ideally even how you brand the Customer Service modules, and the warmth of your “Thank You” message when the user has signed up for emails.
Our job is to bring humanity and connection into digital interactions. And if we ever said it explicitly, it’d be ruined on the spot.
