Credibility Isn't a Feeling: What Your Website Communicates in Under Ten Seconds

When someone lands on your website for the first time, they're making a snap decision about you, your services, and if they can trust you. Their decision may not be made consciously, necessarily, but it will determine if they engage with you. In about ten seconds, they've formed an impression of whether your organization is credible, professional, and worth their attention. That impression doesn't come from reading your mission statement alone, it comes from the overall branding.

What happens in ten seconds

Our brains processes visual information before processing language. This means that before someone reads your homepage message, they've already registered the visual coherence of the page; they’ve determined whether the branding feels considered and intentional, or if it was quickly assembled, or even “sales-y”.

In those few seconds, they're asking: does this look like a place or person that I can trust?

For health practices and nonprofits, people are searching for your services often times in a vulnerable moment of need. They may be searching for care, considering a donation, or trying to figure out if this organization serves their community. Those needs are worth meeting intentionally and with consideration.

Impressive vs. intentional

Many organizations might have the intention to build their site to meet their users needs, but it ends up being designed with more attention to being “impressive” because it is trying to be like other organizations in the same space. But impressive and intentional are different things.

The difference is that an impressive website performs credibility. It may use the visual language of credibility, such as the right stock photos, a trending color palette, and other design elements that say "this is a real organization."

Whereas an intentionally-designed website communicates credibility. It's speaks to the specific person landing on it and their needs; the layout anticipates what they need to find first, every element has been chosen because it meets a need for the visitor, not because it looks “right”. This is where user research comes in to play; researching what your users (e.g. people who need your services) need is key.

Health practices and nonprofits serving real people in real moments will waste time designing to be impressive instead of taking the time to designing to meet needs.

What it looks like when it works

When a well designed brand does its job, a first-time visitor lands on your page and immediately understands three things: what this organization does, who it's for, and whether their needs can be met. The thing about good design is that it looks easy, but ultimately it is designed with intention.

The best health practice websites do this by expressing clarity, such as a headline that expresses who they serve and conditions they treat, a call to action that's impossible to miss, and an About page that makes the practitioner feel like a real person who knows what they’re talking about.

The best nonprofit websites lead with proof and purpose, such as a specific statement of who they serve, evidence that the work serves real needs, and a way to get involved.

None of these elements requires a large budget to produce them, it simply requires understanding about who the visitor is and what they need to know in those first ten seconds.

The question to ask yourself

When someone lands on your website for the first time, can they get their questions answered and needs met, or do they have to work to understand if they're in the right place? Whatever the answer may be, it's a design problem that we can work on together.