New to eCommerce? These 6 Tips Will Make Your Brand Look Trustworthy!

There’s a seemingly endless amount of eCommerce websites out there, and the number grows every minute. While many are great entrepreneurial efforts by small and medium brands, many others are scams. Potential customers often choose a larger and more impersonal vendor, such as Amazon, only because they know they can trust the company. So, how can you set yourself apart as a genuinely trustworthy smaller website?

Online shopping can be dangerous. Too often we read on the news how any number of people suffered identity theft or had their cards maxed out due to a bad website. You don’t get to see the seller’s face when you’re shopping online, and that can easily lead to distrusting a new site. But there are ways to turn that around!

Here are our favorite 6 ways to make your brand look as trustworthy as it is!

1. Be Transparent

The easiest way to look shady is by hiding what you’re all about. You can do this by:

• Show us what you got. Post pictures of your products, and add videos of how each of them works. Plus, this gives you an opportunity to show off in high-quality video, and build a personality for your brand. You can create tutorials or even pdf How-to guides full of pictures for your customers to get a feel of what you’re offering.
• Be upfront about pricing. When you're cagey about final prices, taxes or shipping fees, you can lose customers. We recommend having every detail out in the open from the start, being completely honest about costs. It’s always unpleasant to be one second away from purchasing and finding out that the final price is entirely different. Be better than that!

Checkout Bellroy's product page as a good example.

2. Focus on Helping

New customers who have never heard of you will have a lot of questions about what you bring to the table. One way to gain customers’ trust is to be helpful in answering queries.

• Have a visible Frequently Asked Questions section. This is essential for all websites, but mainly for smaller ones that are still building an online presence. Answer everything from product specs to whether it comes with batteries or if the user will need a particular set of tools to assemble. It’s also an excellent place to talk about details like your returns policy and shipping options. Be upfront and answer questions in the clearest possible way to avoid confusions.
• Get a live chat. This is an excellent addition for customers who need a little more detail before making a purchase. Whether you get a bot or a human (always favor the letter), it’s a good way to show you care about seamless user experience. This will help establish a more personal rapport with your customers and make you seem more trustworthy.

Try LiveAgent, we do!

3. Show Customer Reviews - Good and Bad

Testimonials are a really compelling way to show newcomers precisely what they’ll get from your eCommerce store, from people who have gone through the process before. Having customer reviews makes it possible to back up your claims regarding each product. Make sure you have them on an obvious spot of your site, too.

While you definitely want mostly positive reviews, you should also show the less-than-stellar ones. Hiding them could make you seem insincere like you’re protecting the worst parts of your product. In all, Zendesk found that 90% of people say positive reviews affect their decision to purchase something. You do what you do best, and make sure you have great reviews to show it off!

Amazon leads by example.

4. Support the Most Common Payments, and Let Visitors Know

Any user interface connoisseur will tell you stuffing your site with buttons is a big no-no, but it's what you should do. New customers want to know if they can use their preferred payment modality on your site, and if they don’t know you accept it, they might just leave. It’s essential to place buttons showing off the methods you support, even if it seems counterintuitive from a design perspective.

• Consider accepting newer methods as well as major credit cards. A lot of people prefer to manage their online purchases through something like PayPal or Apple Pay. The more payment methods you accept, the merrier!
• Signal all payment methods very clearly. Don’t be afraid to have your site look like a car full of bumper stickers. This actually makes visitors trust that you manage payments responsibly!

5. Have a Friendly Website

Don’t get caught up in the idea of having a very sophisticated site. Always strive to make things a little easier for your visitors!

• Simplify any process that takes too many steps. Overly complicated eCommerce solutions make visitors distrust a website, as they wonder if the seller is hiding something.
• Add shortcuts and buttons everywhere. Make it easy for your customers to reach your products.
• Get rid of clutter. Don’t ask for useless information that can make your forms look fishy. Besides, fewer things on each page will mean your website will run faster.

6. Show that you Care About Security

Web security is a mystery to most surfers, but they still want to feel at ease with their decision to spend money on a particular site. One way to show off you’re trustworthy is by adding trust icons and badges. Add badges from trusted companies like Norton and McAfee to let your visitors know you’re handling everything carefully.

According to the Baymard Institute:

• Adding visual icons like trust seals makes websites seem genuinely concerned with security, even when it’s not the case.
• Users rely on their gut to tell them if a site is trustworthy. It’s vital to leave signals of security around your pages.

As you can see, there’s a lot you can do to let potential customers know they can rely on you for their purchase!

Bright Vessel works tirelessly towards creating the most secure eCommerce websites out there. Contact us to find out more about which plan works best for your particular case.

Stats: https://baymard.com/blog/perceived-security-of-payment-form