Every day, you come across reports of theft, violence, and fraud. Online, you can't escape it either, and the trust of a visitor on your website plays a major role. How does a small e-commerce entrepreneur gain the trust of the consumer? Contactcare is happy to offer you 16 tips on how to convey trust with your webshop.
Daily, you hear reports about theft, violence, and fraud. Online, it's unavoidable. Phishing emails, hackers, and rogue webshops are the order of the day. Visitors to your webshop are also wary. Because who says your webshop is above board? Big players like Zalando, Bol.com, and Coolblue have long and wide won consumer trust with massive marketing budgets. But how does a small e-commerce entrepreneur gain consumer trust? We offer you 16 tips to win consumer trust, 16 tips to keep 'phishing' from dangling out of digital mailboxes.
1. A first impression is only made once
The first impression is extremely important. An online visitor has certain expectations. That's why it's crucial the visitor immediately finds what they expect. Ensure a landing page that matches the source of the visit. What motivates a visitor to come to your site? If they click on a discount promotion, make sure this visitor sees attractive offers straight away.
2. Think mobile
Don't forget the shift from desktop to mobile. In 2015, 54% of all internet traffic came from smartphones or tablets. Websites are often designed on desktops with large screens. Even in 2016, this mistake is still often made: a website is designed on a desktop and then made responsive so it can just about work on mobile. In many cases, it's wiser to do the opposite, mobile first.
3. Practice what you preach
The appearance of your webshop should align with the core values and unique selling points of your organisation. Are you a price fighter? Then let your website look inexpensive. Take 132inkt.nl for example. The average web designer gets itchy hands wanting to change the seemingly outdated design. Yet, year after year, this website is chosen as the website of the year. And rightly so, as visitors are satisfied, and as far as is known, business is going well.
Conversely, there are webshops that serve the higher segment, like Gucci. If they had a website like 123inkt, it would significantly damage their exclusive image. Ensure your customer sees at a glance what your webshop stands for.
4. Write good texts and ensure clarity
Writing good texts goes beyond carefully avoiding spelling errors. The choice of words, where the text is placed, and its consistency are vital to how reliable your webshop appears. Vague language breeds mistrust, and missing information can result in missed opportunities. Ensure clarity so customers know what to expect. You deliver clarity by presenting information about things like delivery times, shipping costs, warranties, payment methods, and returns clearly and comprehensibly.
5. Avoid technical jargon, speak the language of your audience
Eliminate the uncertainty of visitors. Depending on the industry and the audience, avoiding technical jargon can be crucial. You may be well-acquainted with the terms related to your products or services, but customers may be encountering them for the first time. Ensure technical information is available, customers searching for it will click through, and 'laypeople' won't be put off by stumbling over jargon.
6. Be reachable
To gain trust with your webshop, it's important to be accessible to your customers. A webshop that can't be contacted raises suspicion. Display a phone number on your website and ensure the phone is always answered professionally. Also, pay attention to your customer service's opening hours. If customers often order in the evening, make sure you're reachable then too. In this article, you'll find 9 tips for conducting a good inbound telephone conversation.
7. Offer customer service via chat
Livechat is a channel that's been increasingly popular in recent years. It allows visitors to your webshop to directly contact you, showing that real people are behind the webshop. This low-threshold channel ensures customers can contact you without the barrier of 'calling,' as many consumers are reluctant to make direct contact with people.
8. Ensure good aftersales
View aftersales costs as an investment in your reliable image. Assisting customers well, or even exceeding their expectations, ensures repeat purchases and positive customer feedback. Poor aftersales, on the other hand, can lead to negative reviews on social media and thus be destructive for your carefully built image. Setting up customer service and aftersales is a constant consideration between customer loyalty and efficiency and costs on the other hand.
In this article, 5 tips are given to help start-up webshops organise their customer service and make suitable choices based on considerations relevant to your webshop.
9. Trust through certification
Certifications play a significant role in the perception of a visitor regarding a webshop's reliability. The Thuiswinkel Waarborg is an example of a certification that directly invokes trust from the consumer. Applying for the Thuiswinkel Waarborg takes about 4 to 6 weeks because the certification process comprises different components. After approval of the application, an annual review is held to ensure your webstore still meets the conditions.
On this website you'll find more information about the different certifications for webshops.
10. Display customer experiences and product reviews
Showing customer experiences and testimonials is a great way to convince customers of your webshop's reliability based on objective information. There are various reputable tools you can use to display customer reviews. While Trustpilot is a well-known service helping both consumers and businesses to win trust, Qshops position themselves as explicit certification for webshops. Qshops may speak about a special existence as they combine certification with customer reviews for online stores. This way, online retailers can conduct business, and Qshops' platform ensures trust and transparency. At present, it's possible to start a free trial period, gather data on your own web store, and utilise other handy services.
11. Show who you are
It's wise to show who works for the webshop and what your establishment looks like. Visitors want to know who is behind the webshop. Post photos of your colleagues and your office and/or warehouse. This gives customers a better image of your webshop. These photos can be placed on the website itself, but it might be even better to share them via social media. Through channels like Facebook and Instagram, your webshop 'comes to life,' and customers can interact with your webshop.
Coolblue is an excellent example of an e-commerce business using social media to promote the identity of the organisation. On Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, they know how to reach and connect with their customers humorously.
12. Show that you exist
Naturally, there are many online ways to get noticed and stay in the minds of your target audience. Yet it might also be wise to show who you are offline. With large marketing budgets, you can make yourself heard through traditional media like radio and TV, and temporary pop-up stores can also help show customers you exist. Presence at trade fairs or other events ensures customers can see you, talk to you in person, keeping you top-of-mind, even offline. When customers see that you 'really exist' and your webshop is run by people of flesh and blood, it helps to instil more trust in your webshop.
13. Share knowledge and become an authority
Sharing content benefits both your searchability and reliability. When writing your content, ensure you empathise with your customer's world. Discuss the challenges your customers face and offer tips on how to solve these problems. Avoid the trap of only writing about your company, products, or dilemmas. By talking about your customer's problems, you show your expertise. You don’t have to write all the content yourself; through social media, you can also link to relevant content from other sources. You then function like a news editorial with a specific topic relevant to your customers.
14. Ensure everything is in order internally
Gaining trust begins with being trustworthy. Ensure everything is in order internally. Meet your customers' expectations. Promises like 'ordered today, delivered tomorrow' are crucial from a marketing perspective, but must always be fulfilled in practice to win customer trust.
It also lies in smaller details: for example, having to tell the same story multiple times after being transferred by customer service. Ensure your processes are as automated as possible to prevent human errors. Naturally, human contact is important, but only with the right information available to efficiently assist customers.
15. Choose the right software
An essential part of properly organising processes is choosing the right webshop and CRM software. Don’t just choose the cheapest solution but seek advice from an expert. The software you use largely determines how efficiently your processes run and how well you can serve your customers. In the long term, choosing more expensive software packages may save money compared to an affordable software package.
16. Get to know your customers
A significant advantage web stores have over physical stores is how simple it is to map customer and visitor data and behaviour. This data provides insights into customer needs and wants, allowing you to continually improve the webshop. Besides gathering data, it's valuable to ask your customers questions. A survey post-purchase can reveal insights you hadn't considered. Perhaps most importantly, find out why visitors aren’t completing orders. Does the offer not meet their needs? Are the prices too high, or is it a trust issue? You can discover this by offering a pop-up survey on their shopping experience when they abandon the order process. This can happen as you analyse their behaviour, so you know when to prompt this pop-up. It may seem like an undesirable interruption, but in practice, you may find, for example, that the bank connection isn’t working correctly, and many customers are willing to mention this. Know what you measure and discover which ingredients form the basis for trust in your webshop.
