5 Tips To Help You Build Customer Trust For Your Online Shopping Site

By | Jul 27, 2018 | 743 views |
  • 5 Tips To Help You Build Customer Trust For Your Online Shopping Site

Do you know what is the foolproof way of getting more conversions on your online shopping site? Have a think!

Aggressive Marketing? Huge discounts? Variety of products?

Yes all of these work, but can you keep offering discounts all the time? Are you sure you would get the same order volume once you stop offering discounted prices?

You doubt it, don’t you?

So how can you ensure a steady flow of orders on your online store?

Well, the answer is simple, build customer trust for your brand. Once your customers trust you, they will not only keep coming for more but would also not wait for discounts and offers to make their next purchase.

Why Trust Building is essential for the Success for Your Online Shopping Website

Trust can be your best marketing strategy, albeit you need time and hard work to build it gradually. Once you assure your customers that you are a reliable brand you win them for life.

We know that a purchase decision is not simply an individual choice. Every order is hugely influenced by community preferences and what is being talked about a product. The power of trust works as an important influencer for your brand.

With the consistent effort to understand the needs of your customers, you can create a brand reputation that brings buyers flocking to your site. Once your customers trust your brand they can be your best brand ambassadors and bring more orders by word of mouth.

5 Proven steps to instill trust in your customers

Believe it, every customer has had a couple of bad experiences with online shopping websites. From a customer’s perspective, it is very natural to be cynical and sceptical about your store. Deciding to go for your products or services is like taking a leap of faith for your customers.

When there are thousands of vendors selling products online, the onus of building trust and proving that you are better and way different than other brands lies on you. Guide the decisions of your customers and help them trust your brand by taking the following steps;

1. Build Brand Image with Content

Your website content and its tonality is the first point of interaction with your customers. When you create an online store, you can use your content to attract, engage and gradually win the trust of your customers.

Regular content updates instil a sense of security about the business. As an online store with no physical presence, you need to keep assuring your customers that you are still in business and working to bring better products and services at their doorsteps.

By blogging regularly about your products, the latest value addition to your services, updates about your industry vertical, addressing the issues faced by customers or answering the FAQs of your customers you can keep them interested and invested in your brand.

Also, the product description should be detailed so your customers get the maximum information before ordering online. Adding customer reviews section to your products validates your brand as a transparent and trustworthy brand that respects and welcomes the verdict of its customers.

Online shopping sites can achieve this easily by using simple content tools like blog, forum, product review and rating, adding FAQ on each product page. All these content tools come inbuilt within the StoreHippo ecommerce platform. This makes it easy foretailersto start bonding with their customers which is the first step towards building trust.

2. Priority to Security

Stories of an online security breach are a common thing making cyber security the topmost concern of customers buying online. To add trustworthiness to your brand you need to make changes to your site that follow the proper security protocols.

Online shopping websites that do not implement the right security tools like SSL certificate are also shown as “not trusted” by Google. Adding a simple tool like SSL ensures your customers that all the data transmitted through your site goes through secure channels and even if any malware hacks it they will get some garbage value instead of your actual payment credentials.

Customers are wary about sharing their credit card information on untrusted payment channels. Adding  PCI DSS compliant payment channels to your shopping cart ensures customers that their online transactions are safe.

Additionally, offering a secure login to their account and double authentication via email and mobile also makes your online shopping sites look really serious about security.

StoreHippo offers FREE SSL for all its clients so they have security enabled right from the start. IT also offers 30+ secure payment gateways and full COD support to build customer trust for your brand.

3. Make them feel special

Who doesn’t love to be valued? Customers love the brand that makes shopping seamless and offers them additional help at every step. A business that works towards great customer experience has a better chance at success.

Online shopping sites that incorporate customer relationship building as an important strategy not only get more repeat orders but also have a higher chance of acquiring new customers with less marketing effort.

Understanding your customer persona and catering to their specific needs goes a long way in creating a loyal customer base for your brand. Staying in touch with your customers through various communication channels like emails, real-time push notifications, abandoned cart follow up etc help your brand build trust.

Make it easy for your customers to send feedback and incorporate their suggestions to improve your products and services. Keep them informed about the latest changes to your policies if any. Also, thank them for choosing your online shopping site over thousands of other competitors.

Building a strong customer relationship with help of your support team and automated tools makes your customers trust your brand and boosts your conversions. StoreHippo ecommerce platform offers a host of automatic tools like provision for sending automatic follow upmails, abandoned cart follow up, unified notifications, multiple support channels etc. that make it easier for your support team to engage and make the customers feel special.  

4. Reliable and Fast Shipping

Online shopping sites with the best products cannot build trust for their brand if they do not have a fast and reliable shipping service for delivering their orders. With thousands of online store competing for customer attention, reliable shipping can be a major factor that distinguishes your brand from the others.

Customer trust and eventual loyalty hugely depend on the timely and safe delivery of their order. To ensure this your brand needs strategic planning and selection of the right logistics partners that keep your supply chain streamlined.

Even before you create an online store you should invest time to research and find the right shipping solution for your brand that not only offers multiple shipping choices but also helps you in automating your shipping process.  

Automating manual shipping tasks like printing shipping labels, pick up scheduling etc save lots of time and help you focus on business growth. The provision to choose the most suitable shipping partner among multiple options not only offers cost benefits but also allows you to optimize your shipping route and delivery time.  

Offering reliable shipping is a sure shot way of building customer trust that eventually results in higher conversions. Storehippo ecommerce platform offers discounted shipping to over 20,000 PIN codes using its shipping aggregator service ShipKaro.

5. Be Available

Wouldn’t you love an online shopping site that not only allows you to order 24x7 but also allows you to contact them with your queries anytime? You certainly would.

Your customers should similarly have access to various support channels that ensure them that you are there to listen to their queries. Apart from offering email and chat support your brand should offer other channels that are easily accessible.

A contact form, enquiry forms, support through social channels and easy how-to guides for return shipments, shipping tracking, etc. will make customers see that you are available for them.

Keeping your shipping and return policies transparent also instils faith in your customers. When your customers are assured that your online shopping site is ready to offertimelyand multi-channel support they trust you more.

StoreHippo offers inbuilt tools to integrate social media and various forms on your online shopping site so you can stay close to your customers and build a longstanding relationship with them.

Conclusion

Your customers have a plethora of options for shopping online at the click of the mouse. To beat your competition it is imperative that you win their trust and work hard to keep them loyal to your brand.

The above tips and tools from StoreHippo combined with good products and services from your brand can make it simple foretailersto build trust for their brand. Implement these on your online shopping site with our 14 days free trial and let us know in comments how these tips helped your brand to win customer loyalty.

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