Customer trust is essential in the ecommerce business, with 88% of consumers saying they’re more likely to buy again from brands they score highly in trust. However, as customer motivations change, so do their expectations of businesses.
Understanding what your customers care about and how it will affect their level of trust in you is the key to staying ahead of the game.
I’ve been running an online store for a long time now, and I’ve learned a lot over the years about establishing trust with customers. In this guide, I’ll show you what features and options you need to offer to convince new visitors that your brand is trustworthy.
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The Challenges of Establishing Trust on an Ecommerce Site
Products on the internet are not always as they seem, and many people have been disappointed with something they bought online. In some cases, buyers even fall victim to scams which take their money and fail to deliver the promised goods or services.
That’s why it’s so challenging to establish trust on an ecommerce site. Customers are wary of unfamiliar businesses, especially if they find one through a web search rather than through a personal recommendation.
To keep a customer on your site, you need to begin establishing trust from the first moment of their visit and keep giving them reasons to stay. Some of the key factors in building customer trust include security badges, well-known payment options, consistent branding, and fast, trackable shipping.
10 Ways to Establish Trust on Your Ecommerce Site
1. Make a Good First Impression
It’s easy to tell at a glance whether a website is of good quality. To impress potential customers, your site should look modern and meet best practices for usability. It should also be mobile responsive. Page loading speed is also essential for a good first impression online.
As an established business, one of the most important things to do is keep improving. It’s always a good idea to audit your site and check if it’s time for an upgrade.
You may want to switch from a website builder to a custom-built site, or add new features to stay up to date.
2. Accept Multiple Payment Methods
Establishing trust during the checkout process is crucial, and accepting multiple payment methods can help achieve that. If you only offer limited payment options or if the options you offer do not appear to be secure and reliable, you’re just one step away from cart abandonment.
Your potential customers may not know your brand well enough yet, but the option to check out with their preferred payment method gives them the green light to complete an order.
Pay.com lets your business accept a range of payment methods quickly and easily. You can integrate our payment service into your website through either a no-code solution or our developer-friendly APIs. After a quick set-up, you can start accepting payments and customizing your checkout experience right away.
Click here to get started with Pay.com now!
3. Offer Multiple Shipping Options
It’s a good idea to partner with established couriers and offer a variety of shipping options so customers will trust your delivery process. Some customers are willing to pay more for speed and expect any trustworthy store to provide express delivery, so offering this option can help build your positive reputation.
Other customers may place more importance on receiving their delivery on a set day and time, so a scheduled delivery option can also be beneficial. Offering delivery to pick-up destinations or partnering with green logistics services are two other options you can offer to accommodate different audiences and build trust with more people.
Using couriers that can provide your customers with package tracking features can also help foster trust. Many customers appreciate being able to know where their package is and when they can expect it to arrive.
4. Make Your Payment and Shipping Information Easily Accessible
Before a customer makes a purchase on your website, they’ll want to know about delivery and payment options.
It’s a good idea to include the delivery information right on the product page, so customers don’t have to work too hard to find it. It’s also common to display badges for the payment methods you accept at the bottom of your home page or in the site footer.
Being transparent about payment and shipping can help foster trust, and if you work with names the consumer already knows and trusts, it can increase their confidence in you.
5. Improve Your Security
When you choose Pay.com as your payment service provider, your business enjoys all the benefits of our Level 1 PCI DSS compliance. This saves you all the hassle of having to meet the PCI DSS requirements on your own.
You can display the PCI DSS compliance badge on your homepage and on your checkout page to let customers know they can trust your site.
6. Publish Detailed Product Information
To help customers feel confident enough to make a purchase, you’ll want to provide as much product information as possible. Not only does this showcase your knowledge of the products, it also shows that you’re willing to be transparent about what they can and can’t do.
Some good areas to cover in your product description are:
- What the product does
- What its limitations are
- What it’s made from
- How big it is
- How it’s intended to be used
- How long it will last
- Repairability
- Care instructions
- Contents description
High-quality product photographs are also important. Take shots of each item from different angles as well as up close to show quality, material, and details. Consider including photos on a plain background that showcase the product and photos of the product in its intended usage environment. You may also want to include shots of products alongside common objects, to communicate their size.
7. Leverage Social Media
Social media marketing can help build trust by adding some human touch to your brand. You can use it to communicate with your audience, provide updates, post customer testimonials, run competitions, and much more.
An open conversation with your audience contributes to your reputation as a legitimate business.
8. Focus on Customer Service
Customer service is an area with almost limitless potential for expansion and improvement.
Hiring additional staff is the natural place to start, so you can lower response times. You can also employ a new type of staff member: an AI chatbot. Many successful ecommerce sites utilize these to help customers navigate their sites, automate low-level customer service queries, and escalate higher-level queries.
An AI chatbot can be trained with all the text and information on your site, so it can direct visitors to certain products or information pages and save them from navigating the menus to search for answers. It can also provide 24/7 support in different languages.
9. Show Customer Testimonials
When site visitors see that other customers have been pleased with their orders, they’ll be more willing to trust you.
However, paid reviews have become prevalent on big ecommerce sites like Amazon, and this has lowered consumer trust in testimonials and reviews. To combat this, brands leverage social media and embed real posts from real customers into their websites.
You can encourage customers to post about their positive experiences by running competitions or offering discounts.
10. Be Transparent
Consumers are becoming more informed about how businesses operate and manufacture their products. From environmental concerns to employment and work conditions, customers want to know they’re not contributing to harmful practices.
It’s important to be transparent about your merchandise and how it’s made. This can include providing information on materials or ingredients, as well as the kinds of manufacturing processes you participate in.
A survey from Label Insight found that 94% of consumers prefer brands that practice transparency, and at least two thirds would spend more in order to buy from a transparent company. Another part of transparency is providing reasons for the things you do and the changes you make as a company.
Whether you’re announcing something positive, negative or neutral to the public, if you’re not open about your reasons it can lead to doubts and rumors about your intent. To build more trust in your brand, it’s a good idea to give customers the information they need to feel confident about buying from you.
The Best Way for an Ecommerce Business to Accept Payments
Pay.com lets your ecommerce site offer multiple payment methods. When customers can pay how they want, it helps build trust and supports a smooth checkout experience.
Our Level 1 PCI DSS compliance means you enjoy top-notch security without having to meet the requirements on your own. We shield private information and credit card details in transit through tokenization.
It’s easy to integrate Pay.com into your own platform with our seamless API.
Click here to create your Pay.com account now!
The Bottom Line
Establishing trust with consumers increases conversion and creates returning customers. Looking the part, publishing detailed information, offering multiple payment and shipping methods, and providing quality customer service are all areas you can work on to build trust.
With Pay.com, you can accept multiple payment methods and create a smooth checkout experience for your customers. Our seamless and secure payment system helps you build trust and encourage customers to come back time after time.
Click here to get started with Pay.com now!
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