When it comes to online business, it’s crucial to establish trust on eCommerce sites and apps to gain customer loyalty. Trust signals trustworthy services and serves as social proof for online shoppers in building trust in your e-commerce online store or apps.
But, how do you establish trust in eCommerce sites and apps? This is the question of most eCommerce store owners and app builders. To answer this, you must be consistent with your brand and values. Being consistent is a way to encourage trust from potential customers and earn more loyal customers.
As you might already know, the competition in the online shopping business is tight, and you wouldn’t want to be left behind. In this article, we’ll give you the seven ways to establish trust on eCommerce sites and apps to hopefully help you thrive against the eCommerce stores completion and ultimately gain consumer trust.
Trust Challenge
Before going into the seven ways to establish trust on eCommerce sites and apps, let’s talk about trust. Trust is challenging, and it is constantly changing. For instance, a buyer may look at the customer testimonials and find positive reviews on your eCommerce website.
However, their peers might talk them out about it as they have encountered issues with your brand or app. So, there’s a high possibility that those good testimonials might be challenged by human connection and word of mouth.Â
This will result in cynism and scepticism, affecting the purchase decision of prospective customers. Good thing there are various ways to establish trust on eCommerce sites and apps—whatever your online business is about, these methods are your best shot to establish trust on eCommerce sites.Â
On top of that, it will build good customer relationships that will encourage more consumer trust that will drive in more loyal customers to your eCommerce store or app. Now, let’s move on to the seven methods to establish trust on eCommerce sites and apps.
1. Always Aim for a Good First Impression
Customer trust starts when you make a good first impression. To do this, you have to ensure that your eCommerce websites are attractive to the consumers.
However, that is not enough. There are hundreds of thousands of stunning websites on the web, so you have to find effective means to ensure your brand stands out from the rest.Â
You can do this by making sure that your website not ONLY looks fantastic across all devices but also fast with inspiring imagery, simple navigation, and easy to absorb content.
Furthermore, your website should showcase your product in a very informative way. This help customers find the information they need before purchasing any products from you.
Having your complete contact details on your contact page also build customer trust as it gives consumers knowledge on how to contact your business. Free returns are also one of the bonus points to inspire trust in your business.
It will also help a lot if you have a solid online presence. You can obtain this by having a social media account like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., for online advertising.
That way, your company or business will have a broad audience that can potentially help grow your business. In addition, doing security seals on your eCommerce site will also boost your social proof.
These seals are a type of trust seal, but the names are sometimes used interchangeably since the primary purpose of all of them is to make your consumers feel safe when shopping online. This is particularly true when heading to the checkout page and giving your credit card information.Â
A trust seal is a granted seal by an entity to a business or website for display. This also demonstrates to customers that your business is concerned with web security and their business identity.
So, basically, if you establish trust on eCommerce sites and apps, it will help instil customers trust and improve conversion rates in your online stores’ site. On top of it all, it also increases sales and profit in your company.
2. Make Use of Trust Signals
If your business is not a household name, building trust with your customers can be challenging. Most people tend to fear buying from small businesses due to uncertainty of the quality of the brand and more other reasons.
To overcome this, use trust signals like third-party reviews, free returns, security seals, and physical location on your contact page to lessen their perceived risk. Real customers will highly appreciate this as this gives your business much credibility and physical presence.
A trust badge and seal, such as:
- SSL certificate (Secure Sockets Layer)
- McAfee
- Norton security trust badges
- Money-back guarantee badges
- Third-party endorsements
- Payment processor logosÂ
These trust badges assure online shoppers that their sensitive data, like financial information, is protected. So, make sure to have one to establish trust on eCommerce sites or apps that you are in.Â
3. Make Sure to Follow the Usability Principles
If you want users trust, it’s crucial to follow the usability principles. This means designing systems and products that are accessible and usable for everyone.
Moreover, your product should help consumers achieve their goals. You can do this by minimising technical jargon, offering translation options, and researching to know your audience better.
Here are some of the usability principles that are valuable to follow:
Effectivity
To build trust, even if you’re not one of the leading brands, observe effectivity. An app should allow users to work effectively by equipping a suitable functionality for task completion.
It’s best not to overload the users with information and functions that are unnecessary for their use. Accordingly, discussions should only have relevant or frequently used data.
Every extra information preoccupies the user with meaningful content and risks decreasing relative visibility.
An in-depth study of their comprehension and workflows is the key to understanding the goals and tasks of the users to evaluate the implementation efficiency.
Efficiency
Another valuable principle of usability is efficiency. The consumer or user should perform a task in minimal time. Furthermore, the app should only require minimal time to react and execute an action.
This principle refers to the speed of the process for both system and the users. Signs of users not working efficiently are, for instance, unsuitably utilised interface widgets, misleading search results, missing default values and high-resolution images requiring a fast internet connection.
Meanwhile, the signs of low system efficiency are slowed reactions to input in the shape of a “shaking” cursor, missing feedback, and slow interface widgets.
Controllability
Giving your users authority and control over the app is another way to gain their trust and loyalty. This means the users can pause, cancel and resume an action when they want to, and revert them if the result is unsatisfactory.
Customisability
When it comes to application, it must be flexible enough to support diverse approaches for task completion. In addition, the user must be able to customise the system based on his past experiences and needs, such as changing the default settings, the font size, and creating his own shortcuts.
Design and Layout
This principle comprises every aspect of the application’s visual design. This means the layout of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) elements and the intentionally used colours should support the user with recognisable links.
Information and elements should generally be presented to the user in such a way they can be quickly noticed, and texts can be read easily. Signs of unsatisfying design and layout principle are:
- Tiny fonts
- No apparent correlation between data fields and labels
- Use of low-contrasting colours in front and the background.
These given principles are only a tiny part of the extensive usability principles that should be observed and followed. We won’t go extensively into this, but it’s best to know that the following is also a big part of usability principles:
- Consistency
- Speaking the User’s Language
- Visibility
- Feedback
- Help and documentation
- User Experience (UX), etc.
4. Always Validate Your Customers Belief
Another valuable way to establish trust is to meet your customers where they are and move them to your offerings by validating their emotions, beliefs and lived experiences. Validation needs to be a component of the customer experience as it creates trust, leading to loyalty!
5. Show off Your Products!
People are naturally drawn to engaging visuals, so it’s crucial to showcase your products in liveable settings. For instance, if you’re a furniture owner, it’s best to take high-quality images of your items in home-like scenes and upload them to your website.
It gives your customers what the product will look like in their own homes.
6. Empathy is One of the Key
Empathy is one of the keys to gaining trust for your business. This means that you have to show compassion for your users by understanding what they need and offering practical solutions like help docs, tutorials, and even educational material, helping them use your app like a pro and grow in their functions.
7. Build Long Term Customer Trust
It’s a fact that trust takes time to establish and only a short time to diminish, but with consistency and effort on your part as a business owner, it is achievable and maintainable. Although this can be pretty challenging to do, you can achieve this by always putting your customers first in mind, be it in building a useful application or selling any products online.
Taking it All into Account
To establish trust on eCommerce sites, consumers have to know that they’re dealing with a real person who professionally handles all their business matters. So, if you want their trust, make an effort to help your customers feel valued.
You can use the given methods above to help establish trust on eCommerce sites and apps and gain the confidence of both potential and existing customers.
