When working with a business, it’s vital that you’re able to find an organization that is legitimate in their operations and that you can trust to fulfill your requests with integrity. However, finding this is often easier said than done. So just as you wouldn’t trust the first contractor you find to build your structure without checking out their history, you shouldn't just trust any website you see with what it’s showing you on face-value.

To help you know if a business or website is one that you can trust, here are three tips to help you vet a business website. 

Legitimize Their Trust Badges

One thing that many websites will do to help people know that they can trust them is to put up trust badges. These include things like logos for trusted organizations that they’re associated with or branding from other respected businesses that they have worked with. And while these things can be added to a website legitimately, they can also be faked.

To help you tell if an image of a trust badge is real or fake, all you have to do is click on it. When you click on a legitimate trust badge, it should show you more information about the business or website that has given them this badge to display on their website. If the trust badge is just an image that doesn’t take you anywhere, this could be a red flag. 

The Design, Layout, And Grammar

While most people aren’t professional web designers, people can usually tell if a website looks like it’s been professionally designed or not. And for websites that do appear to be professionally designed, people subconsciously will tend to trust those websites more, even if they shouldn’t.

When you’re checking out a website to see if you can trust it, try to have a keen eye for the details of the design, the layout, and the grammar. Legitimate businesses and their websites will spend a lot of time making sure that everything is perfect. So if you see a mistake, this could be a sign that things were rushed in order to start working and tricking visitors as quickly as possible. 

Get In Contact With Them

Something else that you can try if you’re having questions about a business and its website is to get in contact with them directly.

While most websites will have some kind of contact information on them, only legitimate businesses will make it easy for you to contact them and will get back to you in a timely manner. If you try to email, call, or message the business and you continually get the runaround or can’t reach anyone, this might mean the website or business isn’t on the up-and-up. 

If you want to make sure that you’re always working with quality, respected, trustworthy businesses, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you use their website as a resource to help you determine this.