Gaining people’s trust is really important when you have a website, as you have to convince visitors you can be trusted to buy from, all the more with e-commerce sites. It’s all very well having a nicely designed & accessible site, but how do you make visitors trust you and actually want to do business with you?
One mistake is that many website owners still use a common format when they create their content, such as the following:
What we do, how long we’ve been doing it for and a list of products and services, sometimes all squeezed onto the same page. This isn’t the most convincing of copy and isn’t really going to make visitors want to stay on a website and find out more. To the visitor, it doesn’t seem as if much effort has been put into creating useful and compelling content.
I still come across sites that have no contact details whatsoever apart from a contact form and to be honest, I’m not likely to do business with those people. If they can’t even put alternative means of contacting them other than a form, then why should I do business with them? Is there anyone really there or is my communication going to go into a black hole?
So what can you do to make your company seem trustworthy enough to do business with online?
• Ensure you make it easy for people to contact you and put your business address, phone number and other useful contact details on the site.
• Clearly differentiate your business from your competitors – this makes your business unique. How do you like to do business with your clients, why should a customer work with you?
• If you sell products make your terms and conditions of business very clear, particularly if people want to return items. State delivery costs, how long customers should expect to wait for the items they’ve ordered, how they can contact you if anything goes wrong. Also clearly demonstrate your website is secure.
• Make sure your customer service actually works and whatever you state on your website about your customer service and after sales is true! Bad experiences of a company travel fast, particularly online as so many people are tuned into social networks. Remember that positive experiences will also have a similar effect.
• If you’re providing a business service, provide information about the businesses you work with and results you’ve achieved for them.
• If you belong to any trade associations, display them on your site.
• Put testimonials around your website from happy clients.
• Put up images of friendly smiling faces – show there are real people in your organisation, it gives your business a more personal, human touch and you’re not giving the feeling that visitors to your site may end up doing business with a faceless organisation.
• Sometimes bit of humour can work, which you can incorporate into a blog and make your newsletter livelier!
Whatever you sell on your site, many of the above points will go a long way to convincing people you’re the best company to do business with!
