It is essential for digital publishers to understand what key factors connect user satisfaction and brand trust and monitor to ensure growth of user engagement. In a Neustar sponsored study, conducted by The Ponemon Institute, a leader in cyber security research, three key components were identified to be influencers of online trust.

The first factor connected to digital brand trust is accuracy. According to more than 9 in ten respondents (91%) inaccurate content causes users to lose trust in a website. Further, inaccurate content goes beyond just getting the information wrong, it also includes misspellings, broken links to content or outdated offerings. In addition, advertising that interferes with content (55%) and ads that redirects users to sites they don’t want to see (52%) also has negative effects on a website’s brand.

A second component involved in a site’s brand trust is stability. Eighty-eight percent of the respondents identified a site’s downtime as a trust eroding practice. Also a site’s general usability and its capacity to work with different browsers, plug-ins and flash are important to the perception of a site’s stability.

Lastly, website security is an important feature connected to a site’s brand trust. Both the speed of overall site performance and page downloads are related to security concerns. More than three-quarters of respondents (78%) reported that security concerns them when a site performs slowly. Further, 67% of users lose trust in a website when its pages take a long time to download. In addition, close to two-thirds of respondents (63%) report distrusting brands whose data was breached.

As consumers spend more time online, monitoring accuracy, stability and security is key to delivering an exceptional brand experience.