An article in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday quotes lead author of the study, Brent Coker, as saying, 'Beautiful women make fantastic con people because they earn men's trust very quickly—we see a similar thing with websites. We form trust with people who are attractive ...'
It makes sense, intuitively: if you think of sites you have instinctively trusted, and the ones you think of as suspect, I'm willing to bet a good graphic designer was involved in the design of the ones you prefer.
But that's not all. 'The best way to stop defection to other websites and increase loyalty is to be interesting. Being pretty but with nothing to say is not enough', he says.'The biggest source of frustration for internet users is irrelevant information.'
In other words, focus your website copy on your target market, and not on your business. Use 'you' more than 'we'; answer what your audience wants to know, provide the information they are looking for--make it relevant.
A good copywriter can do all that and keep it brief—the other key to success in writing for the web.