Unlike brick-and-mortar stores, online storefronts are missing face-to-face encounters of visitors to the products as well as sellers too. It results in lack of trust and ecommerce businesses suffer from it heavily. To overcome it, ecommerce used to place some trust establishing signals that can woo online visitors to convert into shoppers and then buyers.
By placing the trust building signals, an ecommerce can win a big conversion rate and increase revenues in multiple folds.
What are trust signals?
By definition, the trust-building signals are some kinds of highlights or characteristic of the ecommerce site, which are capable of revealing confidence in the minds of online visitors regarding your site for safety, security, and the best user experiences.
Of course, there are numerous trust building signals that we can show on the ecommerce storefront and win our patrons easily. However, some are more significant and following statistical data help us to identify those trust-building signals easily.
As per the survey report by Baymard Institute,
“18% of American shoppers abandon the checkout because they don’t trust the website with their credit card information.” — baymard
Another study from Javelin Strategy & Research, they conclude that in 2016 the identity fraud hit a record high.
“From 15.4 million U.S users, the identity info of $16 billion was stolen in the year 2016, in comparison to identity info of $15.3 billion were stolen out of 13.1 million customers the previous year.” — Javelin Strategy & Research
For the last six years, data fraud criminals have stolen critical data worth of more than $107 billion.
How Trust Building Signals lead to Increased Online Sales?
The “Trust Seals” are the basic trust-building signals essential to survival on the web among the fierce competitions that an ecommerce business has to face. The people have a natural tendency to be more careful when dealing with monetary exchanges online.
It is because the reports of data frauds on ecommerce sites and malicious attacks on the privacy of the online shoppers are rampant. Therefore, online businesses somehow need to indicate their online shoppers that they are dependable businesses or organizations that take care of safety and security of their esteemed clientele.
The little symbols of Trust Seals can help online buyers to confirm that the organization is trustworthy and reliable. For example, by discovering trust flags or seals from the legitimate bureaus or international organizations, the online visitors land more and bring more sales to the e-commerce business.
The Sydney Morning Herald depicted that phony online retailers have defrauded Australians out of $150,000 in the first quarter of 2017.
Such reports are heightening the corrupt business hones, for example, Shakuhachi is taking requests for stock they don't have or not satisfying requests. It's quite terrible to see sites like this making a fortune, while numerous genuine, dedicated entrepreneurs are hustling their hearts out!
After examining such reports, we can straightforwardly conclude that why people are experiencing considerable difficulties when they place the stock online on their sites.
Therefore, it is increasingly vital to get your shoppers to believe that your site is stable and secure, and it is possible by using the trust building signs. Now, let’s check some highly significant trust building signals those can indeed help an ecommerce store to increase the revenue in 2018 and beyond.
1) Rating & Reviews by Real Customers:
Product reviews by real customers are turning into an influencing factor in online visitors' purchasing decisions. It is because shoppers believe more on the opinion of their peers than a marketing copy placed by the marketing team.
Therefore, in an autonomous survey conducted by EXPO has demonstrated that 98% of Americans rather depended on customer-generated product reviews placed before a year ago for their next vacation shopping. It emphasis the significant of customer-generated ratings and reviews, and it is obviously visible on top ecommerce brands including Walmart, Amazon, and Best Buy.
The picture given above demonstrates how much emphasis Amazon places on the customer ratings & reviews.
2) Real Testimonials
By chance, your website doesn’t fall into a web-based business category, but it is a lead generating website than the demonstrations like testimonials from your real patrons prove a trust-building factor. The following hints are the best way to get the best out of the testimonials:
- Use testimonials to show how the products or services have made a difference for the clients.
- Never try to alter the original testimonials because real or native language or tone establishes its authenticity
- Never deceptive a testimonial because the online visitors can recognize a modified testimonial easily.
- The testimonials must be under 2-3 sentences long. It is because online visitors avoid reading too long sentences. However, too short testimonial also fails to leave genuine impacts.
It is best practice to provide as much as data regarding the customers who have written the testimonials including name, location, image, and the video if possible. You may think, "Wow I don't have this much detail for my testimonial!” Well never fear, any simple testimonial is better than no testimonial. Simply look at this A/B test case.
3) Contact and Communication
You must provide enough opportunities to the online visitors of your website to come into contact with you or your support team. Quick response to the online shoppers start long-term communication and establishes loyalty.
Avoiding placing enough and more than one channel of contact or communication create distrusts among the online customers.
An article in Business2Community put it like this:
“Trust seals are essential trust signals for the survival of ecommerce sites. People tend to be extra cautious when conducting transactions online with all the reports of identity theft that continues to besiege consumers. Ecommerce sites need to show consumers that they are legitimate companies.” — Business2Community
You must respond to each query placed by the site visitors and refusing to answer them means missing the sale and hence, the revenues.
4) Show Logos of Secure Payment gateway Vendors
Payment is a kind of monetary transaction and requires sensitive information to accomplish. Therefore, people are always looking for secure payment methods and payment gateways. If you place the logos of known and safe payment gateway vendors, it proves a big deal in establishing an eCommerce security identification and acts as the trust factor.
Therefore, Blue Fountain Media has demonstrated the VeriSign (now Symantec) trust seal onto its frame page. Thus, it has expanded its reach by 42%.
5) Exchange and Refund Policy
We know good things can turn ugly on the web any moment and shoppers or the web visitors may need a return or exchange the already purchased products. In due course, you have to depict that you are flexible and customer-friendly by declaring the return and refund, as well as exchange policies.
Please check the following screenshot that how all such things have clarity!
6) Privacy Policy
For the sake of monetary transactions and offering personalization experiences, many websites need personal and sensitive information regarding the visitors. If you are not declaring that how you will respect their privacy and secure the private data provided by the online visitors, none will withstand on your web pages and participate in your business processes willingly.
Therefore, it is imperative for you to declare the privacy policies in clear, compact, and concise manner covering legal aspects too. It will establish a big trust among the website visitors and users.
For example:
7) Social Media Marketing
Social media is the most effective ways to spread your words in viral ways. Therefore, Ted Rubin calls the social media the web-based social networking and marketing channels. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and much more, and it acts as the modern ways of Internet marketing.
Social networking sites have won the trust of the customers a lot and provides a vast network of the Internet marketers.
82% of people are more likely to trust a company when their senior executives or CEO of the business are active on social media.— ceohangout
People used to trust the brands they know. Therefore, Rubin and Steve Olinski illustrate that how c-level customers used to use the web-based social networking to do branding and connect with prospective clients and acquire their trust.
Conclusion
By implementing the listed trust building factors on your eCommerce website design and development, you can establish a trust for your online business and acquire a big traffic that can convert and increase your overall sales & revenues in 2018 and beyond.
Oldest comments (1)
Great post!
Thanks!
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