Human After All – Exploring Trust Signals for Ecommerce

We’ve all been there; three tabs open, comparing prices, shipping costs, and delivery dates. Is the cheapest option too good to be true? How are the reviews? Is this just a sophisticated scam?

When shopping online, we face a question that’s never really existed on the high street (unless you bought designer jeans from Sunday markets in the late 90s). “Can I trust this seller?”

Thanks to a rise in online scams, fake sites, AI reviews, and counterfeit products, shoppers are developing trust issues like a cat near a cucumber, making life much harder for ecommerce businesses.

But what does this have to do with your SEO strategy? Isn’t this something your developer and the eggheads at Shopify should be worried about? Let’s take a look.

What Counts as a Trust Signal?

Well, almost anything, to be honest.

How human and genuine the words are on your site. Whether the images are high quality, or are just awkward stock photos. The reviews you’ve got – and which review site you use. If you’ve got a brick-and-mortar store, if your socials are active. Whether the checkout process feels familiar and reassuring, or janky and dated.

The list goes on.

It’s all the micro-judgements users make when they land on your site and start using it. Hundreds of little unconscious prejudices we’ve all built up about what makes a site feel legit, and what makes one seem…‘off’.

And though this school of thought is closer to user experience (UX) and conversion rate optimisation (CRO) than traditional SEO, how trustworthy your site feels to users does actually contribute to your search performance.

The more trustworthy your site is, the more users will engage with it, which sends signals to search engines about whether to prioritise you over competitors.

When your site feels trustworthy, it naturally earns more clicks, stronger backlinks, more branded searches, richer user-generated content, and better visibility in features like reviews and snippets; all powerful signals that support your long-term SEO growth.

From Clicks to Confidence

As an SEO agency, we regularly find ourselves stepping out of the ‘strictly search optimisation’ world and delving into areas like UX and CRO. Driving heaps of organic traffic is great, but if users then run for the hills when they land on your site, ROI starts to look like a bad crypto bet.

We always have one eye on our clients’ bottom line – and thinking about trust signals is one of the ways we can go beyond just visibility.

In Words We Trust

Let’s face it, everyone and their Nan is a self-proclaimed copywriter. It’s got to be one of the biggest ‘anyone can do it’ myths out there, so it’s fair to say we see a lot of questionable copy. Words that, while grammatically correct and tonally adequate, are doing more harm than good.

From the software company whose strapline ‘Loved by Builders’ made them sound like a hit with bricklayers not developers, to the college using more acronyms than a government white paper – solid copywriting eludes the best of us at times. It’s about clarity, context, and knowing exactly who you’re selling to. 

It’s easy to get too close to your own work; and when you do, clarity slips. What makes perfect sense to you won’t necessarily land the same way with your audience.

While using ChatGPT presents a cheap and cheerful way to get some polished copy on your site, users (and search engines) are getting better at spotting when something straight up whiffs of AI. And we’re not just talking about excessive uses of the em dash, or the phrase “In today’s fast-paced digital landscape”.

To boil it down to three words, humans trust humans.

The language you use on your website says so much about you, and sets the user’s expectations about what buying from you will actually be like. It’s like speed dating; your first impression is everything, and you’ve got seconds to get it right.

Reviews: Your Most Persuasive Copy

I know us SEOs ramble on about reviews a lot, but with good reason. When users can’t reach out and touch a product ‘IRL’ or try out a service themselves, reviews are kind of all they’ve got.

Consumers want to hear how Kev from Brighton got on with his new cordless vacuum, and whether it did the job in a house full of pets. They want to see photos clearly taken on someone’s iPhone of the MacBook case they’re about to drop £60 on, so they can have a proper look at the stitching.

They want to see if there are any patterns to the way people are experiencing your brand; good or bad. And as consumers, a bad review is often the only power we have when things go wrong – there’s huge value in that.

If your reviews are strong, put them above the fold on your website. Display snippets from the best ones, or the ones with the most common use cases. Shout about your 4.9 stars on Trustpilot from the rooftops, because it’s a powerful thing, and you worked hard to get there.

Hard To Reach, Hard To Trust

To really instil confidence in your brand, make your contact page and information super accessible, especially if you’re a smaller fish in a big pond. Big brands go out of their way to hide their contact information, forcing customers to jump through hoops and wrestle with automated systems just to reach a human. Easy win for the little guy.

You can still cover off the generic questions that come up the most with some FAQs on your contact page, but providing a direct email or phone number could be the difference between a customer with a burning question converting, or heading straight to a competitor. 

Simply letting users know when to expect a reply to your contact form builds reassurance, far better than letting their message just drift into the void.

A nicely thought out contact page is also a great place to collect email addresses for your mailing list, and a chance to show off some social proof too.

Customer Logos and Stories

Your previous customers are a big stamp of approval. If you’ve worked with recognisable brands (one of our clients has the BBC, NHS and the Eden Project logos prominently displayed on their homepage) then you should be telling users about it.

It’s an impressive endorsement from a place of authority, and says ‘these guys are legit, they can handle my order.’

You can go one step further and write up customer stories and case studies for various use cases, industries and customer profiles too, which can shine when customers are on the fence and trying to visualise themselves using your product or service. It won’t surprise you to learn that we’ve got a bunch of these on our own site.

In Summary

Google’s algorithms are increasingly geared towards rewarding sites that demonstrate real world trust. A well-optimised site with poor trust signals might bring in visitors, but it won’t keep them, or convert them.

High engagement, low bounce rates, and genuine brand authority all feed into the behavioural signals that help your pages steadily climb the SERPs.

The truth is, trust signals are part of modern SEO whether we like it or not. You can target all the right keywords and still lose out to a competitor who looks and feels more legitimate. So investing time and effort into UX, credibility, and a brand that feels authentically human at every touchpoint can and will give you a competitive edge.

At a Glance – Trust Signals Cheat Sheet

• Watch out for the general quality (and vibe) of things like images, graphics & videos
• Consider UX – how simple and familiar is your checkout process?
• Do you have a brick-and-mortar store? Shout about it
• Get the copy right; clarity, human-sounding, test it makes sense with people outside your industry
• Pursue positive reviews and put them front and centre (homepage, category pages, product level reviews)
• Make your business super-contactable (phone, email, chat) and let people know how long they’ll be waiting for a response
• Shout about your existing/previous customers if they’re recognisable brands – display their logos and write up case studies

The Takeaway

Every click is a small act of trust. When users believe you’re the real deal (not just another faceless drop-shipper), search engines take note. Optimising for humans first doesn’t just build confidence; it builds performance.