Rafiq Ansari

Manager Business Development

Ecommerce

11 Ways to Build Customer Trust in eCommerce

11 Ways to Build Customer Trust in eCommerce

A slip from either of the parties can bring down the business like a house of cards. Winning and maintaining customer trust is critical to eCommerce success. In this article, we tell you the many proven ways how you can humanize your eCommerce store and make your customers trust you more like they will trust their near and dear ones.

When talking about creating a trusted eCommerce business, you need a trusted eCommerce platform as well. Have you ever heard about WooCommerce? Well, that’s one of the best WordPress-based eCommerce platforms. With the help of it, you can make an online store ideal for your business type.

You might be thinking, how can I trust WooCommerce? Well, sometimes numbers tell the stories. Right? Have a look at the few statistics (BuiltWith) on WooCommerce since its inception:

  • Around 4,414,537 websites are WooCommerce customers.
  • Around 9,453 live websites are using WooCommerce in India.
  • WooCommerce is used by 7.4% of all websites.
  • WooCommerce powers over 28.19% of all online stores.
  • 22% of the top 1 million ecommerce sites use WooCommerce.
  • 93.7% of all WordPress ecommerce websites use the WooCommerce plugin.
  • WooCommerce is the most popular plugin/module on the entire internet – with 68% usage distribution.

1. Be transparent

Transparency makes a business inviting to customers. As an online business, you have literally zero physical presence. The only connection your business can possibly maintain is through a digital medium like social pages and communities.

Hence, the need for business transparency is unusually high. As an online store, you can show you are a transparent business by showing the real people who run the show. Most popular brands have relied on an individual to forge a humane identity for themselves.

Moreover, it is also necessary to have a process that customers can easily understand and reciprocate. For instance,

  • How quickly can they cancel an order?
  • How will a returned item be picked up?
  • Will an exchange be delivered for the returned goods?

These are some places where you can show business transparency in online selling.

2. Don’t push it

It’s exciting to see people visiting your online store. It is quite natural to feel an urge to oversell your products with flashy banner ads and pop-ups. However, such marketing gimmicks when done overly are definitely a turnoff for customers. Keep them simple and subtle. Don’t push it and don’t force customers to turn them down with effort.

dont-push-it

Online advertising, when done in a minimal way, can receive maximum results. Serve your customers with targeted ads that hit their preferences and tastes directly. Such a mode of advertising has higher chances of conversion. Also, customers tend to like and trust such websites more.

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3. Show you’re trustworthy

When customers buy products from your online store, they expect to be provided with genuine products from legit manufacturers. The biggest threat to customer trust in online selling is finding fake or counterfeit products.

Web retailers like Amazon, eBay, Target, etc. are increasingly migrating to high-def product images, videos, etc. that give customers a detailed view of the product they are interested in.

Further, wherever possible display dealer credentials or genuine product seals that will instill trust in the minds of customers. Check out how ExpressWatches, an online store for high-end watches showcase their genuinity with an authorized dealer site seal.

Authorized and Secure ecommerce

Can your store deliver genuine products? Can it afford to take back counterfeit products that might creep in? It’s a long way but a surefire way to earn trust if genuine products can be delivered.

4.  Show off

There are a lot of eCommerce stores that tend to go introvert. It feels almost as if they are not even trying to sell. Have a few seasonal and permanent offers? Have something that your competitors don’t. Well, don’t hide it. Show off left right and center. Go aggressive with your marketing.

5. Be easily reachable

According to a study conducted by eConsultancy, 46% of UK customers prefer shopping with online stores that display contact details prominently. Defective goods and customer returns are everyday happenings in the online selling medium. Customers trust those brands more which makes things easy for them to return and get refunds.

To facilitate that, they need to know which is the best way to reach you in case of a query or issue. Display your contact details like customer care number, email, live chat, etc. prominently. Checkout how Lowe’s makes things easy for its customers. Their contact page is clear and well defined leaving no room for doubt.

eCommerce Help Service Desk

6. Show testimonials

Do you know? Customers trust online reviews as much as they trust product or store recommendations from their close friends. Online customer reviews and recommendations have the tremendous power to influence the purchase decision of a customer who is sitting on the fence with a dilemma.

Also, they are proof that your products are genuine and have been already purchased by many. They send strong signals to an interested customer who wants to know the real worthiness of a product or service from a user who has already used it.

Customer Feedback

7. Be social

Social media has literally become a part and parcel of our daily. In China, social messaging apps like WeChat do everything from texting to shopping. The bottom line is, as an online store you cannot ignore the need for a steady online presence.

Moreover, studies by BigCommerce has proven that online stores with a wide-spread social presence enjoy 32% higher average sales than others.

Why do customers trust online stores with a social presence?

  • It is easy to communicate using social messengers
  • There is a huge community of like-minded users
  • Brands cannot ignore queries or complaints raised against them in social circles
  • It creates an equal field of mutual discussion for both online stores and customers

8. Build security

One-third of customers refrain from shopping online because they do not trust the safety of their credit card information. This is despite the advent of virtual card numbers and other cybersecurity measures.

In a way, web security is a huge factor that persuades or repels a customer from online shopping. If your website is protected with an EV SSL certificate, then it will have all the trust signals that customers look for before deciding to take a step inside.

These trust signals that an EV SSL certificate can give include:

  • A green address bar and a padlock symbol
  • Entity/Website owner details in the SSL certificate
  • Trust seals/badges to be displayed on the website

9. Be responsible

As a business owner, whether online or offline, you are 100% responsible for customer satisfaction. Satisfied customers tend to be more loyal and attached to a brand than others. And loyal customers are 12 times as valuable as a new customer.

Moreover, winning a new customer in place of a few lost customers is not any mean task. Instead, it will be easy to win their trust by being responsible for their satisfaction.

It can be achieved by:

  • Providing genuine products as shown and promised in the store
  • Respecting the time and money your customer spends on your products
  • Caring for their concerns and answering all their queries before and after-sale

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10. Be consistent

In business, there are approaches to getting noticed. Giving high importance either to the quality or quantity. When you are consistent in your approach, customers know what to expect from you.

They know what you serve the best; inexpensive products at affordable prices or branded products at a premium price. By conveying your brand message clearly, you will have the right segment of customers coming for your products.

Otherwise, there will be a mix-up causing customer dissatisfaction and unnecessary tainting of business reputation.

11. Seek feedback

Don’t you want to know what customers feel about your products and services? What if they have some suggestions that can transform your brand completely?

As Jack Ma, Founder of Alibaba quoted once, “Opportunity lies in the place where the complaints are.” If your customers have complaints or any pain areas where improvement is needed, be the first to take action.

Be proactive in taking remedial actions that will make things easy for your customers. That will go a long way in making your customers trust your brand more.

In the introduction part, we told you to consider WooCommerce to set up an online store. Now let’s see why did we suggest you that.

Many well-known brands use websites developed with WooCommerce like Porter and York, Barefoot Buttons, Underwear Expert, and The Good Batch. They even have seen a significant increase in sales, and interactive customer sessions. These clearly show the effectiveness, still, let’s have a look at its features:

  • Along with thousands of free modules, it also has beautiful and engaging themes for every type of eCommerce store.
  • It is a content-driven eCommerce website. Content marketing is the king of the SEO practices that help you in getting traffic.
  • It believes in a headless commerce approach. Hence builds websites with utmost flexibility and is future-focused.
  • The speed of a website is most important in the current competitive scenario. There are many options available to speed up your WooCommerce store.
  • The websites built with it are mobile-ready and support multilingual content.
  • Another USP (Unique Selling Point) of WooCommerce is its security. It provides you with regular security patch updates to protect your eStore from theft.

Conclusion

The 11 proved ways on how to build trust in the eCommerce field  and the excellent suggestion of going with eCommerce websites, will solve all your related problems. However, always go for the best Web development company like Perception System as it will provide you the best solution for every query.

Last Updated on -: 26th April 2021