Your brand’s conversion massively depends on customer trust. Unless people come after a friend’s recommendation or an influencer review, they hesitate to shop on unfamiliar websites. They don’t know who you are, where you come from, and how good things you offer are. In other words, there’s no trust. It is vital to have customer trust in E-commerce.

To help clients get rid of doubts and build a good relationship with them, you need to gain trust and ensure it stays there.

Let’s discuss ways to build customer trust and provide customers with valid reasons to choose you over other brands.  

Why Consumer Trust is Important

Trust is the basis of e-commerce consumer relations. Unlike offline shopping, online shopping brings new buying habits. 

Consumers feel uncertain about several key factors when deciding to shop through the Internet:

• People are concerned about security and protecting privacy online. Not everyone is eager to share personal data, especially banking information.
• People can’t check the quality of the product. Everyone has experienced a situation when reality does not match expectations.
• People need to wait for the ordered goods to be delivered. It takes time, money, and patience to receive, accept, or send things back and request a refund. 

Quite a stressful thing this online shopping is, huh? 

A business can remove all of the above uncertainties with trust. If people know a vendor, if the reviews are good, if others recommend it, things will be different. 

Making an order will not be so painful and scary then. If people trust your brand, they’ll forgive the long delivery and return. 

So how do you gain customer trust? Let’s check 5 strategies below.

Improve E-Commerce Consumer Trust with 5 Strategies:

Become transparent 

People visiting your website for the first time will have tons of questions about who you are, what products you offer, how you do the delivery, whether you offer payments upon receiving goods, and so forth.

Ensure you provide accurate and detailed information to make a good first impression and establish trust.

Fill in an About Us page with essential details about your brand, physical addresses of offline stores, a few words about yourself, mission, team, etc.

Take your time to create a FAQ page and keep it updated. Questions will always be emerging, and you will need to include the most frequent consumer queries in the FAQ section. 

Include information about the process of making an order, payment options, delivery dates, returns, exchanges, and refunds. These are the things that matter the most with online shopping. 

Another vital page is the one with contact information. The latter indicates that there is someone at the other end approaching. 

A Contact page is also a perfect place to mention all the brand’s social media profiles for easy reach. If you have certain working hours, mention them along with the timezone (if working internationally).

Develop your social media 

Not considering word of mouth marketing, social media is by far the most powerful influencer in sales increase for e-commerce. It is a rather persuasive tool that can easily change what people think about your brand. 

Therefore, it is imperative to stay active on various platforms, update your profile, including product photos, show reviews, and respond on time.

Social proof is using other people’s opinions to establish a positive image of your brand. The more tags you have on Instagram, the more comments people leave under product photos, the more highlights with reviews you post, the better your reputation is.

Your social media page is like a shop window: things might look extremely inviting, but are they really good? 

Here is where you need to use the tools you have to prove to people your brand deserves a chance to become their favorite. If you can show behind the scenes, do small talks with employees, and post reviews, people will get involved and stay longer to explore.

Keep your store updated to enhance customer trust

If someone comes to check out your website, and the last review dates to 2018 when it’s 2022 outside, you are second away from losing a potential client. People would think that the site is outdated and abandoned. And no, fresh reviews on Instagram might not save it. If you plan to keep everything updated, be consistent.

Ensure to add new and fresh product pictures from different angles, including available sizes, material, care, and guarantee information.

For clothes and shoes, video and high-quality photo reviews can do the trick: clients gain more trust when they see how the item fits and looks in reality.

If something is out of stock, indicate it on time and update on restock dates. ​​If you are constantly gathering consumer reviews, renew the page and add the freshest to the top for potential consumers to understand how your brand is currently doing.

Same with the site copy: all the descriptions, articles, FAQ section, and contact page should have the most recent information. 

People who can’t find a way to contact you will probably leave, so make sure you have a working phone number for clients to address any of their concerns when they need to. 

Be available for customers 

One of the most remarkable ways to win trust is to showcase empathy for your customers. The latter comes with polished consumer service, timely responses, and attention to detail. With all that competition, people will not look at brands without soul, dignity, or respect.

It’s not that easy to impress consumers with quality, next-day delivery, or popular influencers. It’s all about what comes in between communication, a smooth buying process, and the ability and wish to resolve issues.

When you are there for your customers, treating them the right way, they will wait for a few more days as long as they are getting exactly the product they ordered, carefully packed, and delivered.

The more you invest in building relationships with clients and getting to know their preferences and buying habits, the longer they steak with you and your brand.

Using a CRM, you can dive deeper into customer analytics. For example, by connecting Salesforce to Google Sheets, you’ll get all the customer details, orders, and communication history in one place. You have everything at hand to analyze buying habits and customer preferences, and provide customers with the best possible experience. 

Use testimonials 

Endorsements like consumer testimonials add to your brand’s authenticity and сreate due credibility. Whenever people can check what others say about you, regardless of whether it is positive or negative, they will feel like they are dealing with a trustworthy brand.

Ask people to leave reviews, fill in survey forms, and explain their importance both for you as a brand and for your clients. Create a dedicated space for reviews on the social media page and the website and update it regularly.

Acknowledging negativity, rather than ignoring it, is a way of rebuilding trust with existing consumers and establishing one with newcomers. Validating people’s emotions and experiences with you and improving based on honest feedback is the right path towards a solid brand image.

Experiment always and track results

Things will not always be the way you want them. Some social media campaigns might fail. There will be unsatisfied or angry customers. You might not have enough feedback to post. 

But that doesn’t mean things will not going to work completely. One of the keys to succeeding is experimenting and tracking results. 

Try different things and see how they resonate with people. Come up with new offers, start a blog, cooperate with an influencer, and keep in mind that trust is the foundation of long-term and productive relations with your clients. 

Don’t do things just for profit! Target people’s interests.

Wrap up on customer trust

With all those misguiding practices, fake reviews, and dishonest brands, building trust in e-commerce is crucial like never before. You will get a strong conversion boost if you can get it the right way and establish customer trust.

Creating a positive first impression through an updated website and vibrant social media is as essential as being transparent with your consumers, showing empathy, and ensuring they get a consistent and pleasant experience.

The only tip left to share is being patient. It takes time to build a trustworthy brand image. 

Author bio

Dmytro Zaichenko is a Marketing Specialist at Coupler.io, a data integration service. He has 7+ years of experience in content making. Apart from writing, he’s passionate about networking and the NBA.