Conveying Trust Through The Online User Experience
I jumped out of a plane earlier this year. A tandem skydive from 14,000 feet may not sound as spectacular as Felix Baumgartner’s space jump, but it was an exhilarating experience! While the actual skydive took less than 10 minutes, the process of finding a trustworthy skydiving facility took over 10 hours.
Since no one I knew had gone skydiving themselves, I started with a Google search. It wasn’t very consoling that Google’s top search suggestions had to do with skydiving death and accidents, but I pressed on anyway. With most skydiving facilities being equally far away from civilization, and prices being similar, the selection process came down to how trustworthy they seemed. This was an extreme example, where I was literally putting my life in the hands of a business based on their online presence. Even with lower stakes, trust is a basic user expectation and online businesses need to convey trustworthiness.