Building consumer trust in your product is one of the hardest parts of establishing an e-commerce brand. The internet is full of products for sale and, to say the least, it’s a mixed bag. E-commerce sites range from great products with great service to poor quality and misleading products or even outright scams.
New brands should be aware that many customers have already been burned and are understandably wary when buying from a new site. You don’t have the benefit of physical stores where people can walk in person, hold the product in their hands, and talk to real people.
Instead, you need to find ways to build trust through your online presence alone. Below are five tips to help you.
1. Create a safe and secure checkout process
The goal of earning customer trust is to convert site visitors into sales, which requires people to provide their payment information. Therefore, you need to make the checkout process safe, secure, and trustworthy for new customers visiting your site.
Although they are willing to risk receiving a shoddy product and going through a return process, they will quickly run away if they think their personal data or credit card information is at risk of being stolen.
You can build customer confidence in your checkout process by using a popular and well-known payment service provider (PSP) or shopping cart software. These usually come with multiple payment options and trust seals or guarantees to build customer confidence.
Multiple payment options help show you’re a legit operation, with the added benefit of letting customers pay using their preferred method.
While we focus on improving customer trust, earning the trust of your vendors and suppliers is also essential. Modern businesses typically use a comprehensive bill payment platform to keep control of their accounts payable. These offer an easy and secure way to automate bill payments and often come with additional features to combine or split payments, helping you optimize your cash flow.
2. Professional web design
Poorly designed websites increase consumer distrust. This includes the look and feel of the site as well as the following:
Layout
Your site should be well organized and easy to use. Visitors who have trouble navigating your site and finding what they’re looking for may not be taking your business seriously. E-commerce brands need to create the best possible user experience, presenting products in a well-organized way with accurate and up-to-date information.
Interview
Outdated information, broken links, slow load times, poorly written copy, and low-resolution images all make a site feel like it’s not maintained or run by a reputable company. Managing a website is an ongoing process. You should continually optimize the site, ensuring that it performs at a high level.
Security
Your website must be safe for customers. At a minimum, this should include a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate indicated by the “s” in “https” at the beginning of the URL and the padlock icon next to the URL. SSL certification authenticates a website’s identity and lets users know that any communication or data transmitted from their browser to the website’s server is encrypted. Even though most web users are unaware of the specifics of an SSL certificate, if they visit your website and their browser warns them that the site is not secure, they are unlikely to want to. spend money.
3. Get customers to see people, not just the brand
Customers trust people before brands. A great way to increase consumer trust is to reveal the people behind your business. You can do this with a detailed “about us” page showing you and your employees. Customers will trust you more if they have faces and names to refer to rather than just a characterless corporate entity.
You can also provide clear links to your company’s social media accounts, adding more legitimacy to your business. Additionally, you need to show visitors positive reviews from previous customers on your site or, even better, on your social media. Great word of mouth on social media helps customers see reviews from real people rather than just a name on a website or an anonymous 5-star review.
Finally, use direct human language rather than corporate sales language when interacting with your customers. Try to personalize each interaction rather than providing cut-and-paste responses to each request.
4. Put time and effort into your customer service
This brings us to another key factor in building trust in your business: great customer service. Nothing shows customers they can trust you more than going above and beyond the service.
As technology becomes more integrated into customer service with the use of automated chatbots and email responses, many people prefer to speak to a real person. A great way to build consumer confidence is to give them a real person to talk to or chat with when they have questions or want to resolve issues.
While you can’t recreate the in-person experience online, you can do your best to give them someone polite and knowledgeable to talk to if they need help.
5. Highlight your return policy
Returns are crucial for customer trust, especially for new brands that don’t have the recognition or reputation of established names. Someone considering trying your products for the first time is more likely to buy if they know you offer returns. They can always get their money back if they are not satisfied with the product.
Clearly position your return policies on your site to let people know they can try your products risk-free.
Trust is fundamental to sales conversions
In the beginning, you have to work hard to differentiate yourself from bad actors and find ways to build customer trust. First impressions are critical; you can only launch your product once. So take the time to think about consumer trust and how you will prove the legitimacy of your business to new customers.
