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For eCommerce the most important thing is trust. ~ Jack Ma, Founder of Alibaba

Online selling companies need to win customers before hoping to get orders from them. Winning trust in a virtual environment is a task that is easily said than done.

Luckily, there are proven ways to get it done. In this article, we will analyze in detail why customers are apprehensive about trusting online stores and how their trust can be won through counter actions.

First, let us know the reasons why customers might find your website less trustworthy.

Reasons why customers may not be trusting your website

The hard truth is, customers do not transact with websites that they don’t have trust in. websites and online stores commit several mistakes that sabotage their customers’ trust. Here are some such common mistakes that you could also be making to hurt your customer trust.

Lack of a humane element

No contact details. No about us. Customers need to know who you are they are before they will part with the money in their wallets or their private information.

Websites with shady About Us or lack of clear information for contact are least trusted by customers. Most customers will prefer shopping with a website that displays a contact information and is easily reachable over one that is not.

Unclear private policy

Although nobody reads a user private policy letter-to-letter, there are customers who feel safe by its presence. An unclear private policy or its lack thereof can make a customer security-conscious and want to stay away from it. Not to miss mentioning that 25% of online customers abstain from online shopping for fear of personal information being stolen. (Source: The National Fraud Information Center).

Spamvertising

Admit it. You have closed several windows because they bombarded you with pop-up ads or flashy screens. Popularly referred to as spamvertising, this is definitely a turnoff for customers. They tend to place little trust on online stores that resort to unruly advertising tactics.

Outdated content

Is your landing page still running an offer on an outdated smartphone? Or has the content remained passive while market scenario has changed. Well, then your customers are bound to think that your website no longer runs the business.

According to DemandMetric, 90% of the organizations are now experimenting with content marketing. An outdated content simply means your business is no longer publicizing itself or is inert. Not a great way to induce customers to buy from your store. And, they will soon doubt your capability for good service.

How to become a website or online store that customers trust?

Now that you know the reasons why customers place less trust on websites, here is how you can twist the situation to your favor. Some proven tactics to win customer trust.

#1. Become a humane brand

Give your brand and the website a face. Websites that have pictures or features of founders win more trust from customers. Think of these brands – Apple, Virgin, Microsoft, Ford, etc. They are all brands that create a humane connection with customers.

Although it is not possible to create such an impression, in the beginning, it is always possible to display your official contact means to convince customers. A simple team photo or one that describes who does what in your store is a way of showing that your store is indeed a legit business.

Image via: Chinaz.com

Most importantly, have a clearly written About Us section that gives ample information about the founder, the team and the business. More brownie points for a ‘Contact Us’ page giving details of phone, address and location.

#2. Have a clear privacy policy

Users, especially online shoppers are very sensitive about their personal information. Personal identity information, credit card numbers, location, tastes, and preferences can be counted as personal information. An ideal online store must take precautions to protect this information at any cost.

A clear privacy policy is the first step towards that. A clear and prominent privacy policy inspires confidence in the minds of customers and makes them feel safe shopping with the store. The privacy policy can mention facts like:

Practices adopted to protect customer data,

Abstaining from sharing information with third parties

Information collected will be used only for rendering a personalized experience

Most importantly, make sure the customers are convinced of the website’s security. EV SSL certificate and HTTPS encryption are quick ways to convince customers of website security.

EV SSL certificate will highlight the website ownership with a green address bar and HTTPS prefix to the URL. There will also be a padlock symbol that shows that the website is secured from possible third party attacks.

#3. Showcase customer reviews & ratings

Customer testimonials or reviews, in the text, image or video form can lure prospective customers. Such reviews contain valuable information which will help a new buyer make a sensible decision. Moreover, they establish the fact that the product is genuine and worth spending money on.

Also, customer reviews impart on-site ranking benefits. They simplify your task of optimizing the web page with keywords. In fact, the perfect user reviews may also be indexed by Google as “rich answers” that get displayed as top results for related keywords.

Star ratings are also highlighted by Google in the search results thus pushing conversion rates notches higher than otherwise.

Image Via: Mageworx.com

#4. Speed up page loading speed

For every 100 microsecond delay, Amazon loses 1% of its sales.

For every single second delay in loading, a corresponding 7% decline in conversions can be expected. Should we stress more on the need for page loading speed?

The faster your page loads, better your store will be at sustaining conversions. Thankfully, it is not that difficult either. If your store is built on any open source eCommerce platform like WordPress, Magento, Drupal, etc., it is always possible to accelerate the page loading speed by tweaking the internal settings.

Further, additional methods like some mentioned below can be used to achieve a Google-friendly page loading speed. (George Muller of Google once tweeted that anything less than 3 seconds to be an impressive page loading speed.)

Bringing it all together

Be it an online store or a personal blog, trust is the cornerstone to success. Without trust, no Internet-reliant business can win.

In the words of Warren Buffet, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and less than 5 minutes to ruin it.” Building trust for your online store is not an easy task. It is a long and painful process, but one that will definitely pay off. Start right away.