Why trust a start-up?

The art of knowing how to present the idea of a recently started online business in a trustworthy way is a common challenge for many start-ups that are entering the market. Being active only in the online sphere, many start-ups rely mainly on the functionality of their web sites in order to attract customers and gain recognition and positive attitude towards their services. However, defining what a functional and a successful web site is, is a task that is related to a huge amount of subjectivity and a matter of individual perception and preferences. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to observe which are the exact criteria that can make a web site trustworthy and successful. In order to illustrate this goal, this thesis was written with two already fast growing start-ups from Rotterdam – the mentoring exchange service Dwillo and the chef-hiring platform Chefplaza. Both companies still struggle to understand where and why exactly their users are leaving their web sites. Furthermore, in addition to finding out what makes a web site trustworthy, this thesis focuses on researching where the problematic stages in these two web sites are and then improve them based on the theoretical framework that provides specific factors for success and trustworthiness. In terms of structure, this thesis seeks to build a chronological line of arguments that is aiming to represent a media consultancy project - from the problem finding to its investigation and then recommendations how to improve it. Based on the actual statistics from the Google Analytics accounts of the both companies, an innovative research approach was designed in order to investigate the problems and provide recommendations. The most frequently left web pages were measured within an online survey and then discussed by two focus groups in order to help building a practical line of recommendations that could be implied in the strategies of the both online actors. The possible improvements were in the context of integrating a third-party review systems and focusing on a better information summary presented within an easy-to-use navigation layout.