“Every interaction, every conversation, every exchange of ideas has an effect on others and presents for us an influencing opportunity” (Mackin, 2006). Using persuasive communication theories such as the Cognitive Dissonance theory (Fistinger, 1957) and the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) I’ll show you how you can make your website a whole lot more influential.

Trust has been identified by many researchers as one of the most important issues for Internet users. According to Whitty and Joinson (2009) this can almost always be attributed to the degree of uncertainty and the element of risk that individuals experience online. As sites provide, request and gather information, and also try to influence behaviour, support and process online purchases, and even strive to form strong relationships that would result in favourable outcomes for the site owner, getting visitors to trust you and your site is of very high importance. Using research in the area I’ll offer some ways that you can ‘build’ trust through your website.

Coincidently as we’re now well into an ‘age of social media’ and several high profile research studies emerging from the field are concerned with social media, we can’t simply disregard cyberpsychology as being a case of supply and demand. Yes we are interested in these online services but cyberpsychology goes far beyond this.