Five ways to increase your online store's trustworthiness | |
Gareth Sales Thursday, August 9, 2012 |
Hi everyone,
Unexpected shipping costs have long been the number one reason of shopping cart abandonment however fear is also a major factor. If visitors to your site don’t trust you then they will not hand over their card details and purchase from you.
The rise of online fraud has made consumers more wary than ever before – which means that trust indicators on your website are incredibly important. Below are five actions you can take to ease your customers’ fears and make them more likely to purchase from you.
1. Personalize
People trust people, not websites, so it’s crucial that your website has a human factor. Use an ‘about us’ page to present your customers with faces and names. Add a personal message introducing yourself, tell your customers how you got into the industry and why you have a passion for the products you sell.
2. Ensure your website looks professional
Show that you’re a ‘real’ company by having all of the pages on your website a real company would have. By this I mean a returns policy, an FAQ section, a contact form and any other relevant information your customers may require. The more information you can provide, the more confident an online shopper will be buying one of your products (and it should reduce the amount of telephone/email enquiries you receive).
3. Show that Others Trust You
It doesn’t matter how good you are at telling your customers how great your products are, people will always take what other people say about your products 100 times more seriously than what you say.
That’s why it’s important to ensure you include customer testimonials on your website. The next time you receive an email from a happy customer, ask them to write you a brief testimonial; you could even go one step further and ask them for a video testimonial to add to your site.
4. Prove That Your Website is Secure
The majority of online shoppers are educated in online security and will not go anywhere near an ecommerce website that does not have the additional "s” in the URL (https rather than http) and a padlock symbol that tells them that a website is secured.
To ensure your website has these visible security reassurances, you need secure sockets layer (SSL), a standard security protocol that encrypts data between a web server and a browser. To do this, the web server needs an SSL Certificate. If you don’t already have an SSL certificate in your store you could be scaring a lot of customers away, you can purchase an SSL certificate for just $195 here.
5. Understand Customers’ Concerns
Put yourself in your potential customer’s shoes and try to understand what they may be worrying about when they visit your site for the first time.
For many online shoppers, security is the priority, followed by the concern that if they buy your product and don’t like it they will be stuck with it. That is why it is important to clearly spelling out your shipping and returns policy, if you offer free shipping on all orders over $50, have a banner on your homepage telling your customers about it, link the banner to your shipping and returns policy page.
This will ensure that your customers can purchase in confidence, and even if they do return your products, you still have their details so you can promote more products to them in the future.
I hope you find these tips helpful, we would love to hear any suggestions about how you think you can make your ecommerce store more trustworthy.
Happy Selling!
Gareth
Comments
Leave a comment
*Please enter the code shown into the box below