Complicating ecommerce trends demand every small business owner to gain and retain attention from every client constantly.
Vast numbers of online businesses have made consumers more selective, cautious, and promiscuous. Knowing they can simultaneously search multiple websites, customers send businesses a claim to “show your worth.”
Simultaneously, old techniques need to be upgraded to become compatible with the modern modes of online retail. At this point, you start looking for promising strategies to win that contest.
And we have selected some passcodes in that respect. Let’s check them out below.
The concept of customer trust explained
The degree of how much customers rely upon your business is the least precise of all ecommerce KPIs. Various polls, sales trackers, and control of consumer’s reviews will not result in its clear expression.
In general, checking it post factum is not the best solution because buyers start accumulating trust even before a direct purchase contact and continue to wind it up after it is completed.
Another feature is that you must patiently nurture trust for a long time before receiving the fruits in the form of increased audience attention and new leads.
Only by doing business at the highest possible level you can rely on customer trust and loyalty and win the long-lasting race for it.
If satisfied clients opt for your product, come back for more, and bring new adherents with them, then the victory is yours.
The above theory has a literal expression in the fact that customers initially value the opportunity to stay with your brand for a long time. And it is in your power to hook 90% of customers who, according to statistics, are ready to make turnaround purchases from reliable sellers.
If you offer something they can believe in, they will be more than happy to stay with you. But if you rank low on the confidence range, you shouldn’t be surprised by a decline in sales.
Overall, the damage from one mistake cannot be mitigated by an apology because positive reviews concern an average of 11 people, and negative comments spread among 15 people or more.
10 tactics that help you earn customer trust
Now, you understand that customer trust isn’t so simple and requires much attention. There is more than one way to build customer trust. Though fail to fulfill any promise you gave, and you will lose it one-sided.
You can retain your customers only if you keep them satisfied. There are no roundabouts, although the priority of features you need to work on depends on the individual characteristics of your business and could be a topic for a separate analysis.
Learn your customers and listen to their needs
Takeaway: customers prefer brands that deliver personalized offers to them in a convenient way.
The importance of knowing your client is key when it comes to maintaining a healthy and lasting relationship with them.
You must answer the questions: “Who are my customers, and what do they need?”
You could dedicate resources to speculating on how to get access to that information through joint work frameworks so that you stop being secretive and get closer to customers to ask them the right questions.
To better deliver only relevant offers with a sense of personal touch, there are many methods of collecting info about your customers in compliance with data protection standards:
- gather information from social or Google Ads
- review your website analytics
- use heatmaps
- analyze keywords
- be responsive on social media
- evaluate purchasing history by category/customer
- check customer reviews
The following chart presents the main type of data customers are ready to share with you:
Source: Clickz
To better understand customer needs and segment them, you can use insights from your CRM. For instance, if you’re using HubSpot, you can set up an automatic data integration, collect all the information about deals, contacts, eventually analyze it, make a report.
With a data visualization of such type, you’ll be able to understand customers’ location and other personal features to craft the most relevant offers for each segment.
Polish your customer services
Takeaway: when you’re helpful, customers trust you more.
Continuing the previous topic, you cannot achieve a general dialogue with a consumer without developing direct communication channels. This is the best foothold if you have doubts about where to start upgrading your business and what base to lay.
We all appreciate highly individualized and helpful communication. Solid connections and competent specialists in the support department are responsible for these things. The solution will also be activating the virtual assistant and automating this part of the work with the audience.
Having organized training and further employee assessment reports to assure they provide the best answers for the most demanding requests, do not leave customers at the further stages of commodity flow.
Fast, on-time delivery in a convenient way also reinforces the impression of you as a reliable supplier. And even if you unwittingly make a mistake along the way, dare to accept negative comments that will help you become better in the future.
Be transparent
Takeaway: with openness to customers and information about your business, you gain more trust.
You may have a really innovative and functional store that is somehow still not strong enough to create trust with a potential picky customer. Embellishing reality will do worse than honestly describing your proposal.
But the reputation of a transparent business, unsullied by the deception of the public, just like open relations with competitors and the law, will work for you as a “perpetual advertising engine.”
You can obtain transparency by several means. Firstly, you should embrace transparency within your business, among employees. It will affect the level of customer trust indirectly. While the following improves clarity and impacts customer trust directly:
- omnichannel communication with customers
- responsiveness to customer needs
- authentic product images, descriptions, reviews
- About Us, Contact Us, FAQ pages
- participation in events, including local
- updates and news about your store
There’s a non-trivial but practical example of openness. Patagonia, a clothing manufacturer, did it. The company was warning shoppers about the other side of consumerism during the annual Black Friday frenzy. The result was an increase in customer confidence because of the sincerity of the campaign.
Source: Patagonia
Don’t hide faces
Takeaway: customers trust a brand more when they see people behind it.
Whether you have a simple page or a series of blog articles, you must have a space to talk about the people behind your ecommerce store. Let it happen online – customers need to see real people, so allow them to get to know their heroes personally.
You can do a photo session, interviews with employees, reports of your corporate events, where you show the team behind the brand. Give a brief description of what they do and why they do it.
Do not forget about sharing stories, for example, about the whole origin of the company.
The greatest emotional response comes from the company’s personal success stories, with an inspiring synopsis of how the company was founded and the mission that sparked the whole business.
Embrace security
Takeaway: use trusted payment options, be compliant with all critical web security regulations
From the moment the customer uses a credit card or clicks the “Submit” button on an online form, their data security becomes your responsibility. Investing in the right security resources for ecommerce is essential to cement the germinating trust.
End-to-end solutions encrypt credit card data from the moment it is used to the payment processor. Similarly, intrusion detection systems, vulnerability monitoring, penetration testing, and other tools are essential parts of ecommerce security measures that keep confidential data away from those who might misuse it.
Security best practices go hand in hand with employee security training and provide your organization with a standard set of rules to follow to minimize data risk.
Be communication-friendly
Takeaway: speak to your customers, help them, and they will trust in your brand.
Having understood that communication with the clients is the key to their goodwill, you should prepare to lead it in a friendly atmosphere.
From a human standpoint, be patient and nice when dealing with clients, no matter how they behave. Treat them as if you would like to be treated yourself. Self-control and a positive attitude are essential features. For customer service to be at the highest level, regardless of the situation, you should keep a cool head and listen with angelic attention to what our interlocutor has to say.
From an organizational standpoint, your company should have a communication strategy. It relates to all the channels you’re interacting with customers and potential buyers. Of course, the biggest part here relates to direct communication via communication platforms that your support representatives use.
You need to build scripts for popular questions, add an FAQ page, handle individual cases and negative experiences. You have to be prepared for major requests beforehand. It’ll skyrocket your communication efforts.
Collaborate with trusted brands
Takeaway: customers see your brand in line with the brand they like, they start trusting you more.
Choose your partners wisely. Being associated with a pilloried company can damage your reputation. On the other hand, a partnership with a highly trusted business will also enhance your own image. In this way, consider comparing the values of your future business partner with yours.
An example from corporations: even being self-sufficient mega-brands, Starbucks and Spotify decided on mutually beneficial cooperation that expanded the recognition of each company using a reliable reputation of each partner.
Source: Hubspot
The same approach works for the ecommerce segment. You can collaborate with local brands or manufacturers.
Be visible
Takeaway: the more often people see your store on the web, the quicker level of trust rises.
Once the website is ready, you have to start working on promotion. A website without visits is like a footpath that nobody ever goes through. Without people choosing an alternative, more convenient direction, it will overgrow with grass without leaving a trace.
People turn to web search engines to find the solution to their problems. SEO ensures that a website comes out in the top positions when users type specific keywords in the search bar.
While SEO is indeed strong for gaining brand visibility, it’s not an exclusive approach. Improving the digital presence of an ecommerce store is also possible through collaborations with other brands, local events, social media, advertising, influencer marketing, and more.
Embrace customers’ word
Takeaway: people trust other people’s reviews, so use this opportunity.
Allow people who have already bought your products to share their experience and, if possible, give them the facility to rate it. Motivate buyers to share a word about you with a discount, reward, or loyalty program.
A win-win option like this will show customers that you appreciate their opinion, and at the same time, provide doubters with proof of your quality. Work on their engagement with your social media channels to create new platforms for cooperation.
The importance of customer reviews is evidenced by the constantly growing popularity of websites that allow users to express their opinions about online stores. These types of platforms very often qualify for a much more extensive evaluation system, taking into account several different factors – delivery speed, service quality, prices, or returns policy.
This interaction has two purposes:
- to improve the competitiveness of the service that you are currently offering to the client
- to identify possible opportunities to launch new service proposals.
Don’t skip on this opportunity because 88% of customers read reviews and choose brands based on them.
Ask for feedback
Takeaway: by providing feedback about your service, customers demonstrate some level of trust and help.
No one will help your store better than customers themselves. Asking for feedback is a great way to understand the weak sides and find areas of improvement. In the context of trust, customers may be more open to brands that actively ask them about their service. Such interactions with your store make customers feel more loyal to your store, which influences the level of trust.
Asking for customer feedback is possible in different ways. For example:
- feedback form on a website
- pop-up survey on a website
- phone call
- request feedback after the live chatting
- short questionnaires via text
Still, many brands send automated feedback emails via email marketing software. It’s convenient and gives you room to experiment with the message itself, integrate interactive and personalized elements. For example, Derma E went even further and combined product packaging with an offer to evaluate it for bonuses:
Source: Power Reviews
Key takeaways
In a competitive ecommerce environment, the notion of trust is sacred. Your success depends on relationships with suppliers, honest behavior on the platform, respect of partners, but above all on whether customers can stay with you.
And it can only happen if they appreciate the way you treat them, the quality of the products, and the ratings and reviews you got previously.
Share your ideas and stories about earning customer trust. We’d love to read them!
