Stanford University project issues guidelines for building the credibility of a web site. (Online Promotion).

Stanford University's Web Credibility Project, a part of the school's Persuasive Technology Lab, has issued ten guidelines for building the credibility of your web site. Here are the guidelines with excerpts from the project's "additional comments." For the complete report with research notations and bibliography, go to www.webcredibility.org/guidelines/.

1. Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site. Provide third-party support (citations, references, source material).

2. Show that there's a real organization behind your site. List a physical address; perhaps even post a photo of your office or listing with the chamber of commerce.

3. Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide. Provide credentials and affiliations with a respected organization. Conversely, don't link to outside sites that are not credible.

4. Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site. Find a way to convey your people's trustworthiness through images or text. For example, some sites post employee bios that tell about family or hobbies.

5. Make it easy to contact you. Make your contact information clear: phone number, physical address, and e-mail address.

6. Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose). Pay attention to layout, typography, images, consistency.

7. Make your site easy to use--and useful. Our research shows that sites win credibility points by being both easy to use and useful. Some site operators forget about users when they cater to their own company's ego or try to show the dazzling things they can do with web technology.

8. Update your site's content often (at least show it's been reviewed recently). People assign credibility to currency.

9. Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers). If you must have ads, clearly distinguish the sponsored content from your own. Avoid pop-up ads, unless you don't mind annoying users and losing credibility.

10. Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem. Typographical errors and broken links hurt a site's credibility more than most people imagine. It's also important to keep your site up and running.