How can your business build enough trust with new customers to encourage them to shop with you and not an online megastore?
For businesses in any industry or sector, trust is paramount. In the age of Google reviews, Trustpilot and TripAdvisor rankings, first-time shoppers and visitors are keen to know if they can have confidence in your business – or if they should take their money elsewhere.
Small business owners everywhere have long spoken about the perils of trying to compete against the likes of Amazon and big-name supermarkets. While we all hope consumers will support the SMEs in their local community, we must also acknowledge that the corporate giants have by and large built a decent reputation for reliability – a reputation that a small-time local company may not yet have.
How can your business build enough trust with new customers to encourage them to shop with you and not an online megastore? It starts with branding, and signage is one of the most important tools at your disposal.
In this article, we’re going to look at how signage can be used to communicate brand values and give visitors ‘a good feeling’ about your company – and prime them for a quality customer experience before they even step inside.
How signage builds consumer trust
They say that a book shouldn’t be judged by its cover, but unfortunately it is simply part of human nature to quickly form powerful first impressions based on presentation.
In fact, studies show that we tend to form lasting impressions of new things within only one-tenth of a second from the first encounter.
With only a split second to make a good impression, it’s vitally important that your customers aren’t faced with a sign that is badly designed, poorly installed, or in a bad state of repair.
Like it or not, the quality of your signage speaks volumes about the state of your business. For example, visitors to a restaurant with ancient, dirty or broken signs may be likely to wonder if the kitchen standards have been similarly neglected.
Naturally, we want customers to have a good gut feeling about the company – and we can do this by presenting high-quality, great-looking signage that speaks volumes about the organisation’s professionalism and ethos.
Partly this is a matter of keeping the signs fresh, well-maintained and up-to-date. Even a successful business that has had the same old signage on the front of the building for decades can eventually begin to look a bit tired.
However, your brand values can also play a major role in communicating trustworthiness with signage.
What are brand values?
Consumer trust will oftentimes come down to the perception of your brand values – whether they seem clearly defined, whether they resonate, and whether the public believes in them.
After all, it’s difficult to trust somebody when you don’t know what they stand for or what their main motives are. Otherwise, their main motive could just as well be to get as much money out of us as possible by any means – how would we know?
Brand values are the principles that your company stands for and which underpin everything you do. For example, Apple’s brand values clearly suggest that their mission is to change the world with technology and innovation. Nike’s brand values involve enabling and supporting athletes and remarkable humans to achieve great things against great odds.
Customers want to know what your priorities are and whether they can feel good about doing business with you. Why do you do what you do? If they feel that your organisation genuinely wants to make a positive difference or otherwise has noble intentions, a strong sense of trust is fostered.
The design elements you use on your signage can play a major role in communicating your most essential values to first-time visitors. Depending on the type of business, different choices of colours, typography and graphics can make a powerful first impression and quickly let the public know what to expect.
Designing signage for brand values
Some aspects of your company’s ethos can be quickly communicated through your font choices and other signage design decisions.
Some typefaces have a modern aesthetic and might be well suited to a trendy boutique, a digital agency, an upmarket hotel or any of numerous other businesses. Alternatively, other fonts may evoke old-fashioned values, elegant sophistication or childlike whimsy.
It’s important to get your signage typography and colour choices right as they can really help visitors know what to expect – and this in turn is a key component of customer trust.
For example, we know that if we approach a McDonald’s restaurant and see their red-and-yellow ‘M’ logo, that signage is designed to seem approachable, friendly, affordable, and familiar. Anywhere you see that logo, you know what you’re going to get.
The colours and fonts that work for a burger bar won’t be appropriate for an insurance broker or a dentist’s office, so it makes a big difference to carefully select the right design elements to let customers know who you are and that you have the right attitude. Customers may not want to trust an accountant’s office adorned with multicoloured circus lettering – but with a sensible and appropriate design, they’ll know that they are in safe hands.
The design of your signage can also help to prepare visitors for the customer experience they’re about to have and to influence the way they feel about it. If Subway’s signage made it look from the outside like an upmarket fine dining restaurant, it would lead to a lot of confusion (and probably bad TripAdvisor reviews). The right signage helps people to trust that they will get a certain type of experience if they do business with you.
At the end of the day, customer trust is a major factor in the success of any business – and it often begins with the sign over the door.
It’s the first indication many visitors have as to whether or not your organisation is professional and reliable. As they may have little else to go on for that all-important first impression, great signage can be a powerful tool to help them feel reassured.
By making sure your signage is fresh and well-maintained, and that your design choices are congruent with your business brand values, you can let your customers know that your company is the right choice for their needs.
Find out how we can help you install trustworthy signage today – please call us on 01233 625383 or contact us via the website.