July 16, 2024 • 8 min read

Build Your Financial Website’s Credibility with Strategic Web Design

Customer trust is invaluable – particularly for financial companies. After all, people don’t trust “just anyone” to handle their money. Recent analyses indicate that upwards of 60% of adults choose whether or not to make significant purchases based on trust. It’s no surprise that banks, credit unions, and similar brands need to prove that they have the best interests of consumers at heart before they can expect to grow their customer bases.

Earning customer trust is a major hurdle both new and established financial brands need to overcome as they seek to grow their audiences. Smart and strategic financial website design can play a pivotal role in building not only your website’s credibility but your entire company’s reputation among target customers for years to come. Today, let’s explore how financial brands can use web design to improve credibility through strategic actions and choices.

Graphic depicting the importance of navigability, responsiveness, and visual hierarchy when it comes to website design.

What is Strategic Web Design?

Strategic website design is essentially designing your website with specific elements, attributes, or features to achieve predetermined goals. Depending on your exact goals, strategic website design can involve taking steps like:

Ensuring the website will be navigable and making all major services or pages accessible for both desktop and mobile users.
Considering visual hierarchy in the aesthetic design of the site (e.g., choosing brand colors and patterns that both reflect overall brand identity and make the site visually enjoyable to look at).
Designing the site for responsiveness, particularly for mobile users. For example, you might think about how layouts can shift on different screen sizes or how easy buttons are to press on mobile phones compared to desktop computers.

Strategic financial website designs are an integral part of building a new site or optimizing an existing one. These days, a brand’s website is one of its most valuable assets – adjusting it to maximize its value is always a wise idea.

The Importance of Credibility in Financial Website Designs

Credibility is important everywhere. But in the financial sector, it’s incredibly vital because brands like banks and credit unions need to prove to customers that their money is safe and that a brand’s services can be trusted.

More specifically, credibility is crucial because:

It proves to customers that financial brands can handle sensitive information, like bank account details or personal identification info.
Financial brands have direct impacts on customers’ well-being. If a company in another market makes a mistake, a customer might be frustrated or lose a little money. However, if a bank loses a customer’s information to a hacker, that customer’s entire life could be affected.
Financial products can seem highly complex. It can be intimidating for customers to sign up for new services or products like loans, so brands need to feel trustworthy and reputable for newcomers to trust them with their money.
At their core, financial brands offer the same broad services, like banking, lending, etc. So, those brands need to credibly differentiate themselves from their competitors without making outlandish promises or straining customer belief.
Many financial brands achieve business stability by fostering long-term relationships with customers who come back to those brands again and again or rely on their financial partners for all their needs, like borrowing, investing, etc. But it’s impossible to build those relationships without credibility.

Bottom line: for a financial brand to be successful in any niche or arena, it must continuously prioritize credibility.

How to Strategically Design a Financial Website for Credibility

Fortunately, you can use one of the largest and most impactful tools for your business – your website – to increase your credibility among the general public and your target customers. Your website’s credibility directly correlates to your brand’s trustworthiness as a whole. Let’s look at a few specific techniques to utilize

A laptop on a desk with a page pulled up with a “Terms and Conditions” page showing.

Use Security Features to Build Trust

There’s a significant focus on security for financial websites and brands, both because of the potential risks associated with the industry and the need to comply with federal regulations.

When designing a financial website, consider these tips to boost credibility among your target audience. For example:

Be transparent about the data you collect and where you store it – financial customers are very sensitive (rightly so) about where their data ends up.
Be upfront about the data that you track for marketing or other purposes. Not only is this required by certain regulations, but it’s also an important part of establishing trust between your brand and your customers.
Give customers the tools they need to secure their data, such as by offering two-factor authentication for portals or account pages.

Showing that you care about security as much as your customers will go a long way toward enhancing website credibility in this area.

Showcase Transparency in Charges and Practices

In keeping with the above, any charges, fees, and other practices on your financial website should be completely transparent and easy for visitors to parse. Complex legalese or small-font fine print won’t do anything to improve visitor trust – in fact, it’ll only accomplish the opposite.

Many financial services customers are leery of hidden fees or upcharges after bad experiences. Showing that your financial website doesn’t come with that baggage can make a great impression on visitors, especially for new customers.

Include Testimonials and Industry-Relevant Reviews

Testimonials from previous shoppers or users are more important than ever. You can use that knowledge as you create your financial website design by incorporating testimonials and reviews from relevant organizations.

For instance, you can have a dedicated review page that only hosts testimonials from people who have used your company’s services. Alternatively, you can incorporate reviews and ratings throughout your site from organizations like Credit Karma, which helps people keep track of their credit scores. This makes it a better rating site for your brand than something more generic like Yelp.

A graphic illustrating the importance of aligning your images with your target audience on a website.

Align Images with Audience

As you place images during your financial website design process, make sure that those images align with the expectations and desires of your target audience.

Say that your customer base is highly diverse and seeks a financial brand that will treat them fairly. You’ll mark your brand as a more credible, authentic, and appropriate option for those customers by using images of diverse customers throughout your digital materials.

Similarly, if your target audience is primarily parents or first-time loan seekers, images of a retiree with a Porsche won’t particularly resonate with that audience compared to images of people moving into new homes, tackling renovation projects, or playing with their kids. In any case, choose your brand’s images carefully.

Offer Financial Tools or Resources to Improve Literacy

In the financial sector, being transparent means allowing potential customers to investigate competitors or “do the math” to see if your offerings are truly worthwhile. Educational resources, such as informative blog posts or online calculators, show that your brand isn’t afraid to discuss complex topics, help customers understand your services better, or calculate their potential benefits themselves.

In addition, putting financial literacy resources and tools front and center on your website offers extra value to visitors. In the long run, that can help establish your financial brand as a credible, expert operator in its niche.

A financial advisor serving as a resource to customers to walk them through any process or questions they may have.

Unify Your Site’s Information with Info at Physical Branches

If your financial brand has brick-and-mortar locations or retail services, make sure that any information about your financial brand’s services, products, and accreditations or licenses is aligned and identical between those physical places and your website.

Consistency of information makes your brand feel cemented, established, and organized. On the other hand, listing a financial service for one price on your website and then listing that same service for another price at an in-person branch could cause customers to wonder what else you’ve changed – or what else you haven’t kept track of.

Conclusion

Overall, your financial website design is critical to developing website credibility and overall brand trustworthiness. It is one of the smartest ways to leverage this essential part of your online presence. When designed properly, your site can continually create trust among your target customers for many years, helping your brand cement itself as a reputable service provider in its niche.

Whether you want to build your financial platform from scratch or are looking for strategic insights and advice, Infinity Marketing can help. Our experts can assist with whatever you need, from full-scale website design to targeted input and strategic analysis that helps your brand make the most of its in-house web resources. Get in touch with us today to learn more!