(Cultivating) Client Trust

It is essential that artist's web sites cultivate trust, and encourage visitors to become clients. Customer confidence can be gained through appropriate web site content, thoughtful design, and taking steps that show you are responsible.

Appropriate web site content

Here are our top 5 tips.

1. Don't be anonymous! Your web site should say something about you, and even have a photograph. Selling your work requires you first to sell yourself: people trust other people.

2. Your web site should provide all of the information required by the Distance Selling Regulations, specifically:

your contact details - your postal address, email address, and telephone number (optional),
a description of your goods or services,
the price of the goods or services,
delivery costs, where appropriate
the arrangements for payment,
the arrangements for delivery (e.g. when the customer can expect delivery of the goods),
cancellation rights/returns.

3. Your web site should be "family friendly", and labeled as such. If your artwork is intended for a more mature audience, you should use an organisation like "the Internet Content Rating Association" to obtain suitable warning labels for your site.

4. Include a privacy policy. Let customers know that their details will not be disclosed or sold to third parties.

5. Include details of client feedback, and consider joining a scheme where feedback can be left anonymously.

Thoughtful design

Here are our top 4 tips.

1. Keep it simple.

Layouts should be clean and simple. If your site is cluttered, visitors may conclude that you are also disorganised. While cutting-edge technology can be impressive, it should not compete with your artwork for attention.

Look at our Artist's Links page to see what designs others have used, and decide for yourself what works and what does not.

2. Make it easy to navigate.

All pages should be a maximum of two clicks away from your home page. Research has shown that people prefer clicking to scrolling. If your navigation is poor, visitors will leave.

3. *Check your spelling and grammar.

Nothing creates a poorer impression than bad spelling and poor grammar. Spell check, and ask someone else to proof read your text.

4. Make it Browser neutral.

Surfers use a number of different versions and types of web browsers with VDUs set to various screen resolutions. Browsers do not all work in exactly the same way. A design and functionality that works well in your browser, and at your screen settings, may look poor or not work at all on another set-up. The best way to make your web site as browser neutral as possible is to ensure that your code is "World Wide Web Consortium" (W3C) compliant. Performance and design anomalies will make you look unprofessional.

Resources

Essential Tools
	Anyone using the Internet for business or pleasure MUST ensure that they have comprehensive real-time protection against viruses, spyware, identity theft, poisoned web pages, and all types of malware. AVG offer excellent free antivirus software.
	PayPal is a safe and simple way to receive money online. Customers do not need to hold a PayPal account; they may pay using a credit card, debit card, or a bank account. Free currency conversions allow users to accept payment in numerous different currencies. The seller is charged a small fee for each transaction.
	The ICRA allows webmasters to create labels that work with content filtering systems. Labeling with ICRA is a clear sign of good online citizenship and responsible practice.
	W3C provide a number of free online tools. The markup validation service checks the "grammar, vocabulary and syntax" of web documents written HTML, XHTML, etc. The CSS validation service checks the "grammar, vocabulary and syntax" of cascading style sheets. The link checker looks for issues in links, anchors and referenced objects in a web page, or recursively on a whole web site.
Accreditation Schemes
	The core aim of Open College UK is, to some extent reduce internet fraud and privacy issues, and promote safer surfing and confidence for users of the net. Accredited sites must have a clear Privacy policy, a returns/refunds guarantee, clear and understandable Terms and Conditions, and full contact details with a legitimate postal 'brick building' address (not a PO box address).
	The Good Net Guide is an independent initiative that aims to help promote quality web sites (lifetime membership fee of £5). In order to achieve GNG Approved status, web sites must not contain adult material, have a clean and clear design, intuitive navigation, and contain original content.
	iSafeSite registered sites (lifetime membership fee of about £12 - dependant upon current exchange rate) are required to meet minimum standards of safe shopping practices: a privacy policy, secure financial data transactions (where appropriate), and protect sensitive customer information. Site owners must conduct business in a professional and ethical way at all times and respond to customer complaints in a timely manner. iSafeSite provide ongoing, random inspections, and if a member affiliate site fails to live up to standards, that site is suspended or removed form the online database.
Customer evaluation schemes
	Cuge is a free and public service for the evaluation of the service quality and reliability of any web site in the world by the Webster's customers themselves. Cuge creates safety by transparency.
	FreeIndex allows businesses to create a detailed business profile to showcase their products and services, and customers to rate and review their shopping experience, helping other make informed choices when choosing a service provider. Unlike other directories, the top spots on FreeIndex simply go to the companies that have the best ratings and reviews from their customers.
Web design award schemes
	Most web design award schemes support the 3 "thoughtful design" top tips detailed above, but if you would like an independent evaluation of your web site, this can be achieved through application to award schemes. It is recommended that you use Award Sites and United Web Site Award Givers to find approved award schemes. Avoid any "give away" award which is not registered with one of these regulatory bodies. They are simply a device to get a link out of you!
Accessibility
	If you really want to go "the extra mile", consider web site accessibilty. Web accessibility is about making your website accessible to all Internet users (both disabled and non-disabled). If you want to know more, Webcredible is a very good source of information.
	The very unlikely sounding "Cynthia Says Portal" provides a free on-line accessibility checking tool. (NB: Cynthia references USA legislation, which is very similar to the UK Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which requires web sites to be accessible to people with disabilities).