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As an eCommerce business owner, you might struggle to build trust with your customers. Or, you might wonder how to turn visitors into buyers on your site.
Today, there are over 1.5 billion websites online. In order to stand out from the crowd, you'll want to have a strategy for your business. While all of this might seem overwhelming, there's hope.
This article will take a look at ways you can establish trust with your customers. Read on to explore more about forming trust and see higher conversions in no time.
Trust can be defined based on uncertainty, the chance of a loss, and the chance of a gain. When a consumer's trust is high, that'll increase the likelihood of gains. Trust can be influenced since it's psychological. When there's uncertainty, that'll decrease the number of visitors turning into buyers. Avoid hidden charges at checkout since that can increase uncertainty and cart abandonment.
In order to build a relationship with customers and have them come back for repeat business, you need to show that you value them. Make their experience more unique and valuable. Think about sending thank you emails to them after their purchase, maybe even with a coupon that they can use toward future purchases.
When talking to customers, you'll want to be transparent in order to encourage repeat customers. Since your business is completely online, build your relationships through social media, and answer questions that customers have.
In order to show transparency, show your customers who is behind your business. Be transparent about different facts such as how returns, cancellations, and exchanges work.
Your mobile-friendly website needs to have genuine products that customers can buy. Avoid selling counterfeit or fake products since that'll hurt your image, and once it's lost it's hard to recover.
Check out other companies such as Target and Amazon, how they give their customers details about each product, including high-quality videos or images. Show product seals or credentials to prove that the products you're selling are genuine.
Think about your brand's story and tell it to your customers.This is a great way to connect with your customers online.
Your brand's story isn't only website design and product descriptions, but the value and purpose of your company as well. A strong story will build an emotional connection with your audience.
Think about your purpose for opening your store, and the story behind it as you share it with your customers. Make sure that it's relatable to your target audience as well.
Maintain consistency across various platforms. Remember that as a business owner, you're solving a pain point or problem for your target audience.
You'll also want to prove that you're an expert in your field. This means that if you're selling baseball equipment, talk about your baseball experience. It's a way to connect with your customers online.
Set up a blog on your website and provide valuable content to your customers. It's a great way to connect, educate, or entertain them.
Building your content is also a great way to build your SEO(search engine optimization) as well. This is how you'll appear in search engines.
Content building is how you'll build your brand's awareness too. Once you have a new post up, share it on your social channels letting your potential customers know.
If you sell cameras, you can write blog posts about the top places to travel, best photography locations, etc. While you'll want your posts to be longer, make sure that the entire post is engaging and helpful to your customers.
Make sure that your blog posts are SEO-optimized as well. This is how you'll reach the top in search rankings.
Avoid potential customers from abandoning carts by showing off your website's security. In order to see what works best, you can run A/B tests.
This will allow you to predict the behaviour of your customers, and prevent cart abandonment. You can use different pop-ups or notifications in order to encourage them to buy.
Have different trust markers across your site to let your customers know that it'll be a secure transaction. Have an SSL certificate since it'll show your customers that your site is encrypted and secure.
Have recognizable security badges as well. This can includeGeoTrust or McAfee. Have payment options that they'll recognize such as ApplePay, PayPal, and credit card transactions.
Have a loyalty program to reward repeat customers and encourage them. They'll earn a certain amount of points each time they buy, which can then turn into rewards for future purchases. It can also be simple where you send a coupon to their email for their next purchase.
Your website needs to have different pages for clarity such as a privacy policy, about us, and contact us page. Make sure to have a home button on your site as well, for customers to easily navigate your pages. Your contact us page needs to have a physical address since that's one of the biggest proofs you can offer potential customers.
If you fail and try to cover it up, when it comes out it'll be more explosive. Being honest will show that your company is transparent, and will build trust.
Your customers will build trust in businesses that have similar values to them. In order to increase likeability, you'll want to have friendly, fast, and attentive services.
Have direct contact through service and support channels. Speak with your service reps about how they should interact with each customer.
Customers want to see external proof to determine your reputation. This means asking previous customers for reviews over time.
Don't be afraid to ask your previous customers for reviews. It can be as easy as thanking them for their purchase and if they're happy you'd love a review from them.
Your business needs to be about reducing any complexities or confusion on your site or in your business. The more complex something is, the more likely someone is to not buy.
Keep the information about the products that you sell simple and easy to understand. Consider having bullets for the different product features for your customers to easily read the information.
While it's easy to get excited and have a bunch of pop-ups and ads, avoid having too many. When a customer comes to your site, they'll make their first impression based on their experience on your page. If you bombard them with ads, they might click out of your site.
Display contact options for returns, questions, exchanges, etc. Have your contact details properly displayed such as the live chat, email, phone number, etc.
Consider having a 24/7 live chat to answer your customers' questions. If you're offline too much it'll lead to a decrease in conversions.
Once you receive testimonials or reviews from customers, display them on your site for potential customers to view. This is a way to prove to potential customers that others have bought your products in the past and that they're happy with their purchase.
You can also allow customers to leave reviews on different products. Remember that bad reviews don't decrease trust because it means that you're being transparent by showing both the good and the bad.
All reviews need to be from actual consumers. Avoid using fake or paid reviews.
Did you know that in 2019 alone, there were 3.5 billion people active on social media? That's about 45% of the world's population.
Today, there are about 200 people on Instagram who visit a business profile each day. Don't take the power of LinkedIn for granted either since they lead to 277% more leads than Twitter and Facebook.
Use social media to talk about your business and build trust. Make sure that you have a contact option for potential customers to get in touch with you.
First, your eCommerce website design needs to be simple and avoids clutter. Make sure that your site is easy to navigate and that your call-to-action or products are easy to recognize.
Don't have a CTA (call-to-action) that's hard to find since that'll decrease the number of visitors that'll turn into buyers. Make sure that your menus are easy to navigate as well. If you're selling pants, instead of having 5 different categories for the different types, have a category labeled pants.
Have yourself featured in media publications in order to increase the number of people who will see your products. It's also a great way to increase trust when professional publications mention you. This also falls under social proof.
Along with building trust, you'll want to in still certain methods for increased conversions. When a shopper abandons their cart and you have their email from their profile, you can send them a reminder about the items in their cart.
Remember, don't force potential customers to create a profile, but encourage it. Offer a reward for setting up their profile such as a quicker checkout.
Keep up with your blog posts in order to increase the visibility of your site on search engines and through social media marketing. This is a great way to build a following too because some people won't buy until they're familiar with your business, and have seen it a few times.
Blog posts are a great way to get free traffic to your site through SEO-optimized content. Remember that SEO is free content to your site that might take longer to build, but will be steady. Whereas, paid traffic will be a great boost for your business but once you stop paying for it, the traffic will stop.
SEO is also a way to connect with your target audience. You can search for keywords that your audience is typing in, and include that on your page.
If someone is looking for blue baseball hats and you have that keyword on your site, there's a chance that your site will pull up. Whereas, if someone is typing in ballet slippers but you don't sell them, you won't want to include that keyword.
If you don't have your target audience in mind and are blindly writing blog posts and sharing your products, there's a good chance that you're wasting your time. Think of your target audience whenever you're writing blog posts, sharing products, etc.
Remember that your customers will buy based on clear benefits to them. A copywriting rule of thumb is to not only talk about the features but the benefits as well. Tie it all together and speak about how these features will benefit them.
Now that you've explored this guide on the different ways to establish trust with your customers, you should have a better idea of what to expect. Take your time in building your business and strategy.
Are you ready to build a successful eCommerce business but aren't sure where to begin? Or, maybe you're so busy with your business, you're looking for a helping hand in the marketing aspects.
Contact eCommerce Quarterback today. Not only can we help you see the conversions you've dreamed of, but drive traffic to your site as well. Set up your free consultation today!
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