Trust is one of the most vital elements that will improve conversions for your eCommerce store. Whether you are a startup store, an established multi-billion storefront, or running a simple blog website, your success depends on how well your clients trust you.
The internet world has indeed shifted the balance of power from business owners to website visitors and customers. Web visitors now have unique capabilities of confirming the identity of an online store before getting into any form of transaction with the store. Indeed, business impressions and trust hold more value today than ever before.
According to a 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer report, 67% of global buyers agree that good business reputation and trust are vital factors to determine whether they will buy from a brand.
This report should be an eye-opener in the sense that those who need to drive their eCommerce stores along the success paths should invest a lot in building user trust. This article has highlighted the top seven proven tips you can use to build user trust.
1.Invest in a Qualitative Design
The first impression your brick-and-mortar store or eCommerce store gives clients matters a great deal. Website design has a significant impact on web visitors’ credibility judgments. It means that most people will judge a website based on how it looks.
The visual appeal of your website could make or break your website. Your web visitors will infer the quality of your products from the appearance of your website.
A cluttered and poorly structured website will give a wrong impression to your website and will thus drive your web visitors away, thereby reducing your conversions. On the other hand, a well-structured design will have an excellent reflection on your brands and products. It lures your web visitors into staying for long on your website, leading to increased conversions.
Therefore, the first critical step to establishing online trust for your brand is investing in a professional website design.
Although users’ expectations of what a good web design is are constantly shifting, there are essential elements that promote excellent web design. Such components include appropriate color schemes, excellent CTAs, proper visual designs and images, and good website organization.
2.Enhance Web Security
Cybersecurity threats that target website users have been increasing more recently. The increasing data breaches and the high cost of data breaches that accompany them have made web visitors more paranoid. No web visitor is willing to jeopardize their data by visiting an insecure website.
For your website to be trusted, you will need to make it more secure. And today’s web users are tech-savvy and know how to identify a secure website. However, an insecure website will not make your users feel confident as they browse through your website, and most will exit the site if they feel any sense of insecurity.
To impart confidence in your users and make them trust your website, you need to implement strong website security measures. For instance, you will have to acquire an SSL certificate. SSL certificates will blend with the HTTP protocol to give rise to the HTTPS secure transfer protocol. With HTTPS, all information transferred between your servers and your users will be encrypted.
The SSL certificate market gives you multiple certificate options to secure your site and improve user trust. For instance, you can go for basic certificates such as the DV Comodo Positive SSL certificate. For a single domain with multiple first-level subdomains, you can use Wildcard SSL certificates.
However, suppose you have numerous domains and want to secure them with a single SSL certificate. In that case, you should consider investing in a cost-effective Cheap SAN SSL certificate. With this, you can secure up to 250 FQDNs which vary depending on the provider.
3.Remove Broken Links
Having broken links is a common mistake most webmasters make, and it ends up costing them user trust. Broken links often convey a sense of unprofessionalism in the eyes of your customers. As a result, users are less likely to trust a website that has broken links.
This is the reason why you should carry out a routine audit on all your links to ensure they are working correctly. Luckily for you, some plugins will help you check and fix any broken links.
4.Reviews and Testimonials
According to a report by Trustpilot, 9 out of 10 global consumers will make an effort to read reviews and testimonials before finally resolving to purchase a product. Most website visitors will trust a store through reading online recommendations, reviews, and testimonials from peers, experts, and friends.
If you want to gain user trust, you should consider adding a reviews and testimonials section on your website. Additional tools such as rating scales will also play a significant role in increasing user trust.
One trick with testimonials and reviews is that you must always do your best to avoid negative reviews. Negative reviews will cost your brand image and potentially decrease your conversions.
You must strive to deal with all customer issues and give quality products to increase customer satisfaction. Such things will play a key role in sparking positive reviews and increasing your conversions.
5.Contact Information and About Us Page
Another great way to build trust for your business is to add a contact details page. Attaching contact details on your websites shows that you have genuine business with genuine employees.
Such contact details could include phone contacts, email addresses, business addresses, and physical addresses. However, you must also ensure that all the contact information you provide is working.
Another piece of information that will show your credibility is to prove that you are continually hiring. Showing that you are constantly looking for the highest quality employees shows that you are a credible business.
Lastly, ensure you have a visually stimulating and descriptive About Us page. The page should show the names and images of people behind the eCommerce business. Always be honest with your customers when writing this information, and you will earn their trust.
6.Have an Active Social Media Presence
The use of social platforms can be one of the most effective trust-building tactics that you should leverage. Social media platforms allow you to directly talk to existing customers and show your potential customers that you have a responsive eCommerce store that will promptly address their concerns if they arise.
Additionally, adding social media shareable buttons next to your sharable content shows that people interact with the content you publish. Social media presence will give you an upper hand by proving to your existing and potential customers that people are interacting with you and that they can reach out to you if issues arise.
Apart from increasing user trust, social media presence also has a direct impact on your conversions. As you know, social media usage has been growing more rapidly, especially in recent years, and Statista projects that there will be 4.41 billion social media users by 2025.
Therefore, social media presence will put you in a great position to attract a huge chunk of social media users to your eCommerce store.
7. Offer Return Deliveries and Money-Back Guarantees
Money-back guarantees and return deliveries are often thought to be gimmicky approaches that marketers use to get people to buy products. However, when done correctly, they can play a very critical role in building customer trust.
Such promises make your eCommerce website visitors feel confident when purchasing from the store. In addition, they know that if the products do not meet their expectations or issues arise during deliveries, they can return the products and get back their money.
One of the best ways of providing satisfaction guarantees is by giving out free trials of your products. Although this might look like a risky and cost-ineffective idea, free trials are a perfect way of spreading brand awareness and increasing customer trust.
Conclusion
Trust is a significant asset to your online business. Unfortunately, while most webmasters and eCommerce store owners know the significance of trust, most do not understand the methods to acquire it. This article has given you some of the best trust-building tips which you can use.
