Building Customer Trust in eCommerce

While online shopping has swiftly climbed up the graph, increasing its scope and growth, there is no denying that physical stores have the balance scale in their favor in one major way. That’s because customers can walk into shops, judge the ambiance, the products, look squarely in the eyes of the staff and deduce on the spot whether or not they want to make a purchase. In the case of eCommerce stores, though, customers surf the entire online site before they take a leap of faith. They know there are lots of online shopping platforms selling similar products, so they have a “show me what you’ve got” mentality.

For winning customers over on the internet, you need to build a reliable relationship of trust with them. Digital businesses that know what they are doing and are aware of the techniques that can help them secure customers are sure to reap the goodness they sow. Here are some practices you can employ to build customer trust in eCommerce.

Quality control

While prices do matter, customers care more about quality. Coming up with a batch of high-quality products might seem exciting, but the real challenge lies in maintaining the same quality standards. Customers visit your online store again and again when they find consistency in the manufacturing, style and other features of your products.

For instance, a customer can like a minor detail such as the stitching of your clothing products and look forward to that same quality being present in future products.

This is why it is essential to bear these two pointers in mind when wholesaling products:

•    Wholesale products from the same suppliers and order most of your stock from them.

•    The less wholesalers and brands you depend on, the less inconsistency in product quality you would face.

LS Bags Wholesale values quality control a lot, and that is why it has kept a stringent control over the type(s) of leather, metal work and other material used in the manufacturing of each product. Whereas we are upgrading and increasing material types used in our brand’s production, we have reduced the number of factories we work with to a few, so that product consistency is achieved right along with strict quality control.

Be honest and transparent

Being straightforward about any rules in policies is better than planting seeds of hope for something your business can’t deliver. While over-promising might seem tempting, it can be downright corrosive when it comes to customer trust. People are more inclined toward spreading a negative experience than a positive one.

To reassure customers, follow these rules: 

•    Be open about why you need customers’ information such as email addresses and the like.

•    Be upfront about everything from pricing to promotion and return policies

Additionally, remember that being honest in business dealings doesn’t advise you against playing around pricing psychology. There are several ways you can be truthful yet impact customers' psychology to make more purchases.

•    Start by reducing the left digit by 1. That is, instead of offering a product for £20.00, sell it for £19.99.

•    Have a sale every month. That wouldn’t just clear slow selling stock but would also work to psychologically encourage buyers to make more purchases.

•    Keep in mind to mention old price in a different font size and colour right beside the new price for this to work more efficiently.

•    Buy one get 50% off on another product is also a way you can shape your sale to sell more products.

Communication is the key

Make customer support easily available. Give people channels to connect with your team so that if they ever need your assistance, they can get it swiftly. For effective communication, you can;

•    Post a number, an email address, social media platforms and web forms through which customers can contact easily.

•    Be sure to respond quickly and in a professional yet personable manner.

•    Avoid sending out automated replies to customers apart from a general notification that their message has been received and the approximate response time.

•    Be genuine and respond humanly; this helps customers trust you; when users notice stock messages being sent to them, or a robot interacting on the other end, they don’t prefer continuing the conversation.

•    Be polite and don’t be shy using the word ‘sorry’ when your company is at fault.

Sharing is caring

When wandering on an online store, the first link customers tend to pay attention to is the story or the aims of the store. That is because they feel vulnerable giving their information to a site they stumbled across. When they read the background of the company or any relevant, important piece about it they feel a connection with it.

To build trust, you can follow these steps:

•    The site’s “About Us” page can talk about the authorities of the brand, how it came into being, what the brand aims to give, the manufacturing process of the products, the values of the business or an amalgam of all these.

•    Social media and blogging are two more tools that you can make use of to make people aware of how you do your business.

•    Display your qualities and successes as well such as positive customer reviews and the goals your brand has achieved.

Positive customer reviews that are genuine can also work wonders to attract more purchasers. Most people are paranoid to take the brand’s word, but they believe in what fellow customers have to say about the brand. If you are wondering how you can encourage customers to leave reviews, here’s how:

•    Be sure that customers get a lot more goodness than they were expecting. Exceptional products that are way better than described encourage people to leave reviews.

•    Ask nicely and make it easy for customers to drop reviews. Set up multiple profiles and platforms for that.

•    Turn every piece of feedback into a review and never miss a chance to display the reviews.

•    Make reviews easily viewable. This would prompt others to leave reviews.

Studies show that 90% of people read online customer reviews. 84% of buyers trust online reviews so much so that reviews dial up the notch on sales by 18%. Negative reviews tend to have a supremely adverse impact on your business which makes it necessary to have more positive ones.

Even if your products meet people’s expectations, they can be too lazy to log in and review their purchased items. But if the product is better than what they were hoping for, they would remember to drop a review. With LS Bags, you are safe; our products are exceptional value for money, so people are bound to leave positive reviews.