Consider your venture a foolproof success if the online visitors have trust in your ecommerce business. It is not possible to expect success in this field in the absence of user trust. In times of cutthroat market competition, every business is trying its best to attract the target audience. The visitors to a particular website assess the website on a handful of parameters. Your website must serve the expected to win the visitors’ trust that will eventually benefit you soon. There are a few trust indicators an online business can work upon to keep the brand credibility intact.
These indicators are simple badges, marks and time-oriented reminders to ensure a visitor that your brand is trustworthy. When the users often question the brand credibility and expect minimum risk, it is entirely your responsibility to work on the trust signals website can improve. Trustworthiness is critical to a brand as it influences the decisions of other visitors as well. Therefore, if the brand credibility is declining continuously, it is an alarm to make immediate changes and reinforce the entire plan.
With that being said, modern ecommerce businesses are coming up with new strategies to level up their trustworthiness and improve their market rapport. It has a massive impact on the ecommerce conversion rates and thereby affects your turnover in a huge manner. In this piece, we’re presenting an insight into the cardinal trust indicators and how they can work for you to bring store conversions. Let’s quickly dive into this piece and understand the same:
- Reviews and testimonials for the site credibility: The most commonly observed customer behaviour includes checking reviews and testimonials before purchasing. It provides a sense of satisfaction to the users that they are going for the right platform and product. Customer reviews, therefore, should be an essential part of your website and maintained accordingly. It boosts the credibility of your platform and ensures the user about their decision. To win user trust should be your priority as a brand, and the importance of this factor is high. It guarantees authenticity to your ecommerce business, and thus a sense of satisfaction is developed within the ecommerce community.
Other than this, make sure that the negative comments aren’t piling up on the website as it will develop a negative rapport. Work on providing good services and have a review section full of appreciation that further leads to business expansion.
- Flawless consumer service: Consumer service is another important aspect that the users look for while checking trustworthiness. A well connected, user-specific customer service helps win users to the brand. This customer service should be available throughout the day and guide the users through their queries. Often the users have problems or issues post-purchase, and the users cannot find a proper contact point to resolve it. As a result, it develops a negative brand image, and the users neglect the brand. Make sure that the users are provided with only the best in terms of customer service.
Try not to use automated tools or bots for the same. A personalized human touch while serving the users is also recommended to build trust. Chatbots also reduce credibility to a certain extent.
- Impressive policy structure: A complicated and difficult to understand policy is considered to be of no use in ecommerce businesses. The policy should be stated clearly to give a crystal clear and wholesome picture of the brand idea. Do not try to cover up using hefty jargons as visitors will not make much effort to understand it and will quit. Experts suggest that it is one of the most important factors resulting in site abandonment. An impressive policy adds up to the trust factor, and the site receives an overall good response in the market.
In a precise manner, it is essential to have a well-formed return and refund policy to ensure the visitor that the site is not problematic at all. Policy structure is a reflection of the brand and should not be compromised by any means.
- Pin down the geographical location: It is important to give out the details of your physical address to make the customers believe that you exist outside the online sphere. It adds up to the brand image, and the users can find you too. Other than the geographical location, you can add the phone number and email address too. Providing the physical location increases the business’s credibility and thereby helps you win more customers over time. You can put the business on Google for showing more credibility and gain more popularity. Recently, the experts have laid immense importance on mentioning geographical location on the ecommerce site and additional details in making the business successful. This will also bring the visitors more satisfaction as the location-based strategies are extremely popular. In this smartphone-centric era, most users prefer a store with the geographical location mentioned as it highlights their positive response towards the webshop.
- Security certificates for the win! : Customers these days are concerned about their security in the cybersphere. Amidst the increasing number of cyber-attacks worldwide, users want a secure online environment wherever they visit. In terms of the e-commerce world, customers share a plethora of sensitive information with the webshop. It is, therefore, their priority to make use of only a well-guarded site. To display the same, SSL certificates are largely implemented to build trust within the community of a particular webshop. They secure the in-transit communication between the web browser and the client-server by encrypting it. The intended recipient can only decrypt this encrypted information.
There are a wide variety of ssl certificates performing well in the market today. These are available at budget-friendly costs and perform the function well. Comodo SSL, RapidSSL certs are extremely popular examples of such certificates that have set the bar high. It is important to gather information about the requirements of the business before making an SSL purchase.
- Smooth return process: The customers pay equal focus to the return and refund policies as they give to the shipping policies. It is your responsibility towards the customers to not disappoint them on this front. The cancellation policy may sound like not a great deal to some of the businesses, but it is the key to win the users for your ecommerce business. As the users automatically gravitate towards a webshop with a smooth policy of return and cancellation, it is going to bring you some great deals as well.
Trust indicators an online business must have include a well-thought return and refund procedure that does not attract any negative reviews or feedback for the company. A complicated return policy does not receive appreciation from the customers, and the users start ignoring the brand to the core. Presenting this particular aspect of a smooth return policy can bring you more business in the future.
- Adding trust badges and seals: As a very important aspect to winning user trust, it is suggested that you always display the trust seals and badges on the site. People look for such badges in abundance these days. It is considered a great hack to establish user trust in your brand. It is one of the simplest means to let the visitors know about the legitimacy of your site. In addition, these trust seals ensure the users that they are using a safe site and the procedures are all secure in conduct.
Place them appropriately on the site, all the spots that will catch the user’s attention. This is again a great strategy popular these days to attract more business.
- Active Social media presence: Another factor contributing to trust-building is active social media that will completely lift the brand credibility aspect in no time. Today, the massive use of social media among all age groups is well known, and thus this can be utilized by ecommerce businesses for their purpose. Social media can be employed to generate brand awareness and establish a good rapport in the market. As the trust factor cannot be forced or demanded, it is entirely in the hands of a particular business to work towards it and achieve the same with time.
Trust is an important factor in expanding the business. However, it takes a long time to build and can be lost overnight. It is therefore suggested that your social media posts should not be vague but target oriented. It helps you to develop a wide user base and overcome geographical restrictions. Many big businesses are using it extensively to achieve good results.
- Human touch with real pictures: Let’s accept that the customers get influenced by human touch to some extent. People are anxious sometimes before buying a certain product from a new page. But real pictures of people reviewing or giving their feedback can ease that anxiety to a large extent. The majority of well-established brands today work on the same principle and attract new customers to their page. Images along with physical proof warm up the business and feel highly relatable to the user too. Statistics suggest that a faceless page does not tend to do better in the long run as the trust factor is influenced by it. A good survey can also be conducted to see the results with or without photos, and results can be further utilized for making progress.
- Avoid discounts that are too good to be true: Discounts are largely appreciated by the customers, especially first-time buyers. The traditional model of brand promotion among the users had a huge role of discounts in it. But today, the viewers are conscious about their security in the cybersphere and do not opt for brands with massive discounts that don’t even sound real. Mostly this has been a strategy, but the fraud companies offer massive discounts to attract customers. These companies take away the money of the customers and never show up again. This is a major reason that people doubt discounts that are too unreal.
CONCLUSION
As you want your ecommerce business to stay here for a long period, it should be your priority to work on trust-building to establish a good market image. It is your responsibility to work on different aspects to build up trust and credibility with time, and this can only be done by practising the measures mentioned above. As most companies today are working hard to sustain and progress, there are still a few companies struggling, and through these ways, one can emerge victoriously with time. But, not to deny, it is a tricky affair to build trust, and several firms are failing to do so even after years of market span.
Trust indicators and the remarkable signals trigger the positivity towards your brand within the customers that are ultimately beneficial to the business. There’sThere’s no set formula to winning complete user trust, but you can achieve it to the maximum extent by a balance of efforts and technology.