Website strategies beyond trust badges

Our first big decision of 2025: Not renewing with our review site vendor. Being a review site customer has become standard for B2B SaaS. But I’d encourage companies—particularly in the earlier stages where budget is tight— to take a moment and ask themselves if it’s a worthwhile investment anymore. We did Wynter testing that showed our audience placed almost no value on badges and scores. What they DID care about were video testimonials, written testimonials with names and titles, and on-demand product demos. So in 2025, we're doubling down on our greatest assets: our people and product. While every company claims to have great talent and a great product, we have the customer validation to prove it. Here's our execution plan: ✔️ Expanding our video testimonial library ✔️ Collecting old-school, detailed letters of recommendation ✔️ Building a "Customer Stories" hub that showcases real results ✔️ Highlighting our real people on our website ✔️Creating an interactive product playground Why this matters: In a world of AI-generated reviews and pay-to-play rankings, real human connections cut through the noise. Our customers have spoken, and we're listening. Here's to building trust through transparency in 2025. Curious: Have you noticed review site badges losing their impact?

Would you trust a $600K transaction... on a site that looks like a weekend MVP? That was the question I couldn’t shake while exploring a fintech idea. No stakeholders. No client brief. Just one belief I wanted to test: 𝘌𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘺𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘺𝘰𝘶’𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘨𝘶𝘦 — 𝘢𝘵 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘨𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦. So we designed a concept for a next-gen expense platform. Not to show off visuals. To show 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐞𝐝. Because real trust isn’t built with badges and buzzwords. It’s built through: - A landing page that signals confidence - A UI that says “we’re solid” before a line of copy is read - A product that feels like it belongs in boardrooms, not hackathons Every element here was built to answer one question: “𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘦?” This wasn’t about pretty interfaces. It was about perception architecture, how your design feels before anyone scrolls or clicks. If your product handles millions, but still looks like it handles a hundred… You're not just leaving money on the table — you're repelling the clients you're actually built for.

You’re treating clicks like it’s a conversion path, but your users are navigating it like a minefield. 💣 It’s not just a gap in data, it’s a gap in perspective. 👀 Users aren't just navigating your website, they're navigating their trust in you. 👉 The real signal? It’s in the ⏸️ pause before the click. That moment of: “I’m curious… but I don’t trust you yet.” → Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) typically prioritizes visible trust indicators like badges, reviews, and guarantees. But most of the time, it overlooks a critical variable: emotional reassurance. Why is this important? According to behavioral insights, users form gut-level judgments in as little as 50 milliseconds. So, before logic takes hold, emotion decides. Put another way… Ignore the emotional pause, that split-second user skimming your content, and you risk losing potential conversions before trust is even on the table. ❇️ This is where trust is won or lost. 👉 So then, how can we get better at offering emotional reassurance? Small shifts in language. Take this illustrative example: 👇 A fintech startup with auto investing powered by AI (yup, you guessed it), sleek UX and zero commission, and the whole shebang. Everything looked right....but conversions stalled at the “Connect your bank” step. ❌ Dashboards showed low click-through. The typical response? → Increase Ad spend. Push more traffic. But having a session 📺 replay helped tell a deeper story: → People hovered over the tooltip “Why do we need this?” link…then left. But how come? The tool tip was perfect, factual, accurate, informative, and linked to more info.. Well… What if we made a real change with something more human, something that changes that emotional moment before the click…Why? 👉 Because...small shifts in language lead to big shifts in belief. ✅ The generic tooltip with something ❤️ human: ⤵ “We use bank-level encryption. Your money stays in your account until you choose to invest. You’re in full control, always.” ✅ Then add a founder’s note with their pic 🤳: ⤵ “We’ve been burned by hidden fees too. This platform is different, and we’ll prove it.” I bet you can already imagine the impact this change can make…bounce rate will drop, bank connections will rise, and trust will become more believable. Real connection isn’t created by over-optimized funnels, shorter forms, fewer fields, and faster clicks alone. 👉 It's built in the quiet spaces between words, in the ❤️ hearts and 🧠 minds of people. → The pause. →→ The restraint. →→→ The earned emotion. So if your voice feels like it’s loud and pushing for a conversion…try whispering something real instead. Trust is built in the ⏸️ pause, not the push. #B2BMarketing #Marketing #Startups #Sales #AI #Leadership #Strategy