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One of the premises we must always keep in mind when selling online in an eCommerce is that people always buy in places that make them feel safe.
In fact, the volume of transactions made on the internet grows year after year (see source CNMC), whether it is hiring a service or buying a product in an eCommerce.
The main challengefor any small or medium business model that sells products or services is to show its potential customers that they are trustworthy.
I mean that a product or service must have the customers’ trust, and it is not only about having a quality product with good reviews, but also that the brand and the online channel it sells through are safe and reliable.
Since customers don’t associate a brand image with these values, small and medium eCommerce businesses have a harder time.
That is why one of the questions you should ask yourself is:
What is the key to boosting online sales?
Maybe it is building more trust, isn’t it?
Let’s see what steps you can take in your eCommerce to improve the way you convey “trust”, with the goal of increasing your sales.
Steps to build trust in your eCommerce or service
1) A well-kept eCommerce or app
The design of your online store or app is very important for the user to form an impression of your business.
If the look&feel or design is not well made, you may be giving the wrong values and message.
2) Add corporate information
Show your customers who you are. It is better that they know who is behind the service and that you say who the team is, both the managers and the people who make everything work.
Also publish information about the company behind your eCommerce, such as the mission and values, and even include, as an institutional or professional story, the life of the company with its milestones.
All these actions make the customer feel that the company behind the eCommerce is serious, and so they create a greater sense of trust, since the customer sees that there are real people behind the online store, making it more personal and human.
3) Videos always increase credibility
A very good idea that will never go out of style is to use videos that are clearly visible on our own website or with links to our YouTube channel.
Creating videos and publishing them on your own YouTube channel, on social networks such as Instagram or Facebook, or in your eCommerce or app can make the message you want to bring to your customers easier to get across, and if you make it eye-catching it can be very instructive.
You can use this both to communicate corporate information and to show the main features of our products and services to potential customers in a more attractive and simple way.
It is proven that using video achieves greater communication impact, increasing trust and credibility, than any other written or visual medium.
4) Privacy, returns, shipping and after-sales service policies
Make all the shipping, customer service, after-sales service and, above all, personal data protection (LOPD in Spain) policies of your eCommerce business very clear.
Create a specific page for each of the policies and link to them at the moments when your customer needs to know. That way they will see that your business is transparent and that you offer all the guarantees they need.
5) Security certificates
Shoppers are more expert every day and know which businesses are well rated and backed by institutions that promote internet security for the quality of the service, secure payment, shipping or information requests. That is why it is important to include some kind of security certificate in your online store, as a recognized trust mark.
A secure payment certificate, for example, gives you greater peace of mind and, by default, users’ trust in how the information will be handled on a website or online store.
6) Known payment methods
Take advantage of the brand image of the main payment gateways and associated banks you have integrated in your eCommerce, for example PayPal, which is a very secure type of payment gateway and recognized by customers.
Put yourself in the user’s place. When entering your site they may doubt you because they don’t know you. Imagine if the payment gateway is not known either: that can lead them not to buy, and so your abandonment rate will be high.
But if you have integrated PayPal or Redsys, which everyone recognizes, this will build trust since they understand there is a secure company such as PayPal and, in the case of Redsys, the bank you have contracted the service with.
7) Easy direct contact
Another way to show trust and, at the same time, improve the quality of your serviceis to offer direct communication channels to your customers, for example: include a phone number, physical address, email, install an online chat or even use social networks such as Facebook, Twitter or WhatsApp. If you answer quickly on each of those channels, they will have a very good image of you and you will win their trust for your eCommerce.
In short, by showing yourself so accessible to users with so many communication channels to contact you in cases where they have some kind of problem with their online purchase, you can turn that moment around with a solution adapted to their needs.
It is very important to have a high credibility of the after-sales service and solving customers’ problems or doubts increases their satisfaction and the trust needed for new customers to come.
8) Show off your reviews
Show the world that you can be trusted and let people know who you are, what you do and what your successes with other customers are, through the comments and opinions they leave about your eCommerce, products and services on other platforms such as Google Maps, TripAdvisor…
It is proven that users look up the ratings of a site on the internet before buying there. These reviews are an important decision point for ending up buying in your online store.
9) Be active on social networks and your blog
Social networks are a perfect place to show your values and your wish to convey what your online business is really like. At the same time, if you have a corporate blog run with a good content strategy of quality, it is also a very good way to instill trust in your potential customers.
They are good communication channels to position our eCommerce and to attract and retain our readers or followers, who will be more likely to become customers.
10) Manage criticism on social networks
When you provide a service of any kind, we are happy to see the positive comments about our eCommerce, but not so much when there are negative criticisms about different problems a user has had.
So, to avoid problems and turn negative comments into positive ones, give transparent and quick treatment. This will build trust in the person who didn’t have it and in whoever reads it.
In short, a well-managed criticism can end up positioning us very well if we know how to do it, and it is also a good way to get feedback from our users and so improve the service.
11) Create engagement and loyalty
This point is the key to any good digital marketing strategy, that is, to make our users become loyal to our eCommerce by generating engagement, all based on a point that must be key for the development of the service: customer service. As I said before, it will not only increase trust in our eCommerce but also make future online sales easier.
Conclusion
By giving a professional image of the eCommerce, and by offering detailed and clear information, you will be building a strong reputation on the internet.
Also, if you use social networks and/or a blog with quality content to make yourself known and/or generate loyalty, we will be taking another big step.
Creating a dialogue with users builds a social community around your business, offering future buyers a more complete, deeper and more intimate view of the eCommerce, making it more credible and more human.
In short: how to build more trust in your eCommerce to increase your online sales?
