You Built a Better Website. So Why Are They Beating You?
The trust mismatch hiding inside most “good” business websites
When it comes to conversions, “more effort” on your website can be a liability.
You’ve researched your products and written about them in unmatched detail. You’ve built something comprehensive and beautiful.
You’ve done everything right.
Yet, sales aren’t improving. Traffic might even be doing well, but…people aren’t buying or making enquiries.
And yet, you look over the fence at your competitor whose site sucks.
Half the number of products/services, seemingly a tenth the number of features, yet people seem to be talking about them more. They’re ranking better on Google, and they’re converting more customers.
All in all, you probably spent weeks longer building your site, yet they’re winning hand over fist.
So, what’s going wrong?
More information means more credibility…right?
It’s tempting to want to pre-empt any question a customer might think of.
But put yourself in the mind of a consumer. Imagine you own an eCommerce site selling household appliances. Comments like, “Made from sustainably sourced materials!” or, “Guaranteed to work for 8 years!” are excellent—if your target buyer cares about that.
Now, imagine I add, “Powered by a custom firmware architecture”.
Some people might care about all those things. But I’d guess that’s a pretty small group.
The reality? Each new item we add to a web page adds value for those who care about that particular thing. But it comes at the cost of diluting everything else on the page for everybody.
Heck—I made the same mistake for years. When I began my eCommerce website, I wanted to create as many products as I could, and I wanted to pack the product/category pages with as much information as I could think of.
The irony in cases like this is that more information doesn’t make prospective clients think, “Ooh, comprehensive!”
It just makes them switch off. Sometimes it’s because we’ve nattered on about features they don’t care about.
But often, we’ve missed a different trick.
What your site is optimised for is not how it’s judged
When we start out, we all think customers are going to care about the same things we do.
We think they might be asking:
How did you make this thing?
Can it also wash my car or tidy my kitchen?
It becomes easy to overlook:
Can I safely buy from you?
Are you even a real business?
And that’s the thing we overlook when we treat our websites like brochures instead of proper storefronts.
If we’re too busy describing how we can help people, we forget to answer the questions they’re actually asking.
The buyer-judgement precedence
Pages chock full of irrelevant information will have trouble converting.
Pages chock full of information which buyers care about will have a much better time. But there’s a thing which comes before any of this.
Let’s go back to my fictional eCommerce store. I have a page that describes a washing machine I sell. The first hurdle to overcome in any buyer’s mind is:
If I hand over my payment information, what are the chances I actually receive a washing machine?
Only after that will they look at the product in more detail. But even then, many of the extra details I could add to the page are irrelevant. They’ll ask:
Does it actually wash clothes?
How long will it last?
How much does it cost to run?
The fact that it was made in Germany, that it spins at 1600 RPM or that it’ll sing me a verse of Killing Me Softly if I ask nicely is fun. But unless we’re specifically in the business of selling singing washing machines, it’s a much less important detail.
Ultimately, buyers will ask themselves questions like these in this order before committing to any purchase.
Is this company safe to trade with?
Does the product do what I need it to?
What else can it do, and how does it work?
There’s no harm in including a lot of information in the third category.
But it should absolutely not come at the cost of the extensiveness or the clarity of information in the first two.
Painting the right picture
Business websites are not brochures.
Yes, they explain what the businesses do. But the most successful businesses will use the websites to paint a picture of the entity as a whole.
Here are some other things you might have noticed around the web which didn’t seem like much, but were subconsciously affecting how you saw the business.
#1: Blogs and other free information
Free value is incredibly underrated.
I don’t mean free samples, surveys/appraisals or quotes (the latter being very sales-y in any case).
Even something as simple as a blog can feel superfluous, but the writing is communicating important things to you.
Client success stories tell you that they have a track record.
Informational content implies the business knows what it’s doing.
Together, they suggest a business run by real people who care about solving the problems of others.
None of this pushes the customer to buy something specific. But it does help them to decide if the business is real, capable and safe to transact with. Especially if they arrived through a search engine or from an AI citation, customers arrive with an extra layer of trust.
#2: Testimonials, case studies and reviews
One final time, let’s consider the online household appliance store from earlier.
You really wanted a singing washing machine, but nowhere sold one. Then, you finally stumble across my store, and you can tell that my washing machine not only cleans your clothes, but also comes pre-loaded with all your favourite tracks.
Now—for a product of this quality, I’m charging a premium. And you know it’s worth it. But that still doesn’t mean you’re immediately going to pay me a lump sum and twiddle your thumbs for a few weeks while you wait for delivery, right?
Next, you notice a message in the footer: “100% totally reliable company”. Well, great.
Beneath that, though, is a 5* review from “Super Washing Machine Weekly”. Yeah, I could have just made that up.
But after some sleuthing, you find:
Pictures and videos of my singing washing machine in people’s homes
Reviews from happy customers on Reddit
Thousands of 5* reviews on Trustpilot
How does that change your perception of my store?
Especially for off-site signals, they strengthen the idea of a legitimate business in your head, which makes it much more likely you’ll convert.
So why is your competitor beating you?
Websites don’t win because they’re simpler or more extensive.
Websites win because, by the time the customer lands on it (or, shortly after), the most important question has already been answered.
At that point, the website’s job isn’t to convince the customer; just to confirm.
If the trust signals are missing, no amount of shine, sales copy or feature-listings will save it.
But once the customer feels safe in the hands of the business selling them something, even a very unextraordinary site can convert well.
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