Want con­sumers to trust your brand? Then make sure to post accu­rate con­tent, avoid down­time, and keep their pri­vate data safe.

Trust is a qual­i­ty which many brands hope to inspire amongst their con­sumers. From launch­ing a live Q&A con­tent forum, to the age old (and occa­sion­al­ly risky) prac­tice of hir­ing influ­en­tial spokes­peo­ple, brands view trust as a key com­po­nent of their over­all rep­u­ta­tions.

An absence of trust can have wide-reach­ing impli­ca­tions for a brand, across the busi­ness. Uber, for exam­ple, con­sis­tent­ly suf­fer with con­tin­ued abuse of tech­nol­o­gy and con­sumer pri­va­cy, as well as with accu­sa­tions that the com­pa­ny pri­or­i­tizes con­tin­ued growth while fail­ing to address a long-term prob­lem with eth­i­cal behav­ior.

Why do con­sumers lose trust in brands? To find out, Neustar released a report, “What Erodes Trust in Dig­i­tal Brands?”, which reveals the biggest fac­tors that cause con­sumers dis­trust brands.

In today’s dig­i­tal world, where con­sumers are so often asked to pro­vide per­son­al infor­ma­tion dur­ing cer­tain moments of their pur­chase jour­neys, trust becomes an even more impor­tant qual­i­ty. In entrust­ing brands with an ele­ment of their per­son­al infor­ma­tion, con­sumers look for key sig­nals and indi­ca­tors to assess whether a brand is trust­wor­thy.

Luck­i­ly, Neustar’s sur­vey of 750 adult Amer­i­cans shows that these indi­ca­tors are often sim­pler than you might expect.

Here are four quick tips to ensure your brand wins con­sumer trust.

1. Ensure Content Is Accurate, Useful & To The Point

Inac­cu­rate con­tent is one huge way to erode con­sumer trust. Nine­ty-one per­cent of peo­ple said they lose trust after view­ing inac­cu­rate con­tent on a brand’s web­site.

“In our always-on, always-con­nect­ed world, a brand’s dig­i­tal store­front may be the first and only touch­point a cus­tomer has with a com­pa­ny,” said Lisa Joy Ros­ner, CMO at Neustar. “Dis­cern­ing cus­tomers expect a brand’s web­site to offer them accu­rate, real-time infor­ma­tion, when­ev­er and wher­ev­er they want it.”

Make sure your con­tent is free of errors and mis­takes, that it offers answers/solutions to questions/problems your audi­ence is like­ly to have, and that you give it to them quick­ly.

2. Avoid Website Downtime At All Costs

Web­site down­time is anoth­er way to lose con­sumer trust. Eighty-eight per­cent of peo­ple told Neustar they have lost trust in a brand after they can’t access their web­site.

That means you must ensure that your brand and web­site are con­stant­ly avail­able!

In addi­tion, a con­sid­er­able 67 per­cent of con­sumers lost trust in a web­site that was per­ceived to load too slow­ly. How­ev­er, the report also found that the amount of time that con­sumers were will­ing to wait for a page to load var­ied by indus­try.

For gov­ern­ment or finan­cial ser­vices, more than half of con­sumers were will­ing to wait an addi­tion­al five sec­onds for a page to load. For enter­tain­ment or social media web­sites how­ev­er, just 10 and 6 per­cent of con­sumers were will­ing to wait an addi­tion­al 5 sec­onds for a page to load.

Clear­ly, con­sumer expec­ta­tion will strong­ly dic­tate the impor­tance of page load times to your brand. If you run an enter­tain­ment web­site, for exam­ple, then you know it’s an indus­try in which con­sumers are used to the fastest online expe­ri­ence. So if your web­site can’t deliv­er a speedy expe­ri­ence they expect, your site will sim­ply fall out of favor.

3. Keep Consumer Data Secure

A data or secu­ri­ty breach can do ter­ri­ble dam­age and cause con­sumers to lose trust in your brand. In these instances, “27 per­cent of con­sumers says it takes more than a year to regain a pos­i­tive view of a breached brand [and] 24 per­cent report that even 12+ months lat­er, they con­tin­ue to view the brand poor­ly.”

“Cus­tomers demand that all of the infor­ma­tion they share with a brand is retained in a safe and secure man­ner,” Ros­ner said.

That’s why you should imple­ment a rig­or­ous iden­ti­ty and authen­ti­ca­tion process, one that inspires con­fi­dence. Also, fig­ure out how you’ll store the data.

4. Don’t Let Ads Interfere With Content Or User Experiences

When it comes to on-page adver­tise­ments, Neustar found that usage of dis­play adver­tis­ing did­n’t intrin­si­cal­ly dam­age trust. Even so-called “aggres­sive ads,” such as ban­ner adver­tise­ments, did­n’t neg­a­tive­ly impact con­sumer trust.

Instead, con­sumers main­ly dis­liked ads that inter­fered with con­tent (55 per­cent), and ads that redi­rect­ed con­sumers to irrel­e­vant sites (52 per­cent).

It sug­gests that con­sumers are still fair­ly recep­tive to dis­play adver­tis­ing, inas­much as it still does not erode over­all brand trust. How­ev­er, this is on the assump­tion that the ads are at most aggres­sive (or promi­nent) with­out being inva­sive (encum­ber­ing the view­ing of con­tent, or the desired nav­i­ga­tion of a site).

What are you doing to ensure your brand wins con­sumer trust?