Building Ecommerce Trust

The most important factor for good conversion rates on your Ecommerce website is building trust with your customers. This is exactly the same as in your shop - people are more likely to part with their cash if they trust you. As a retailer, building this trust with customers in your shop is second nature, however, building trust online requires a completely different technique

Ecommerce conversion rates are the life or death of an online business. Whilst you may drive large numbers of visitors to your site, if they don't trust you, they are not going to part with their credit card details. In a shop, customers always have the comfort that they are at least going to walk away with the goods. If you are using Chip and Pin this automatically builds trust that they are paying you in a secure manner - you inherit the trust already built up in the Chip and Pin brand. If you start writing down a customers credit card details on a slip of paper at the checkout in your shop, the customer is apt to leave in horror! Conversion rates in shops are always much higher than online ecommerce sites. It is quite normal for less than 1% of site visitors to actually checkout. If your Ecommerce site has 1000 visitors per day and a conversion rate of 0.7%, you get about 200 orders per month. Increase the conversion to 0.8% and that's 250 orders per month.

To build trust on an ecommerce website, you first need a professionally designed site. It needs to look good. Everything needs to work - no missing images or links that don't work. A non-working link will loose you a customer faster than anything else on the website. You website needs to follow common conventions of Ecommerce design. People expect a certain workflow, they expect easy to find checkout buttons. If your site follows some weird metaphor that is different to most site, this will put customers off.

Make sure you've got a large product file. Websites with a small number of products to buy are unlikely to get any customers. People need to feel confident that a particular website will "work". A recently added products section, with current dates, goes a long way to helping people think a website is current and in working order, and not abandoned and unused by the retailer. Even having the current date and time displayed on the page somewhere helps this process.

SEcondly you need to inherit trust from the major brands. Make sure you have logos from your payment processing provider and your security certificate provider scattered over your site, especially in the checkout. If you use Paypal as a payment option, put the Paypal logos on your site. Most payment providers, including paypal, offer a verification program, so you can display the "Verified by Paypal" logo on your site. Inherited trust is one of the most important things your can do to boost customer conversion.

Further trust can be inherited from the anti-virus companies. Most of these offer a service that constantly scans your website for computer viruses and allows you to display a "Verified secure by McAfee" or similar logo on your site - again this is more valuable inherited trust.

You can also inherit a small amount of trust from the brand you sell. If you sell electric goods, then having promotions featuring brands such as Apple displayed on your homepage will help build trust. It isn't often acknowledged, but

The final dose of inherited trust comes from your payment provider. When they finally reach the checkout, customers feel happy if they are taken off to one of the big names to have their card processed. SagePay, WorldPay, Paypal, Google Checkout. By using a large established and market leading payment provider, people are far more inclined to part with their card details. Unless you have a large established brand already, taking the card details on the site itself is less likely to convert than a third party payment page.

Make sure you have a good About Us page with plenty of information and company history. Make sure you include an address and phone number. Whilst people are unlikely to use them, they expect to see them. Same goes for a privacy policy and a returns policy. Make it clear in the checkout that you accept free returns - this will go a long way to helping customer decide to complete the sale.

You need to have your customers trust your ecommerce website, and the best way of doing this is a fully functioning website that is regularly updated and which inherits trust from major online brands to increase your conversion rates.