7 Tips For Ecommerce Marketing Success: Tip 3

Build trust

Now that we know to focus on our product and brand first, what’s next?

You must build trust with your audience.

Would you ever buy a Rolex from a rundown shop with broken windows and or a street vendor that carries his products around in the inside of his coat?

Probably not. At least not if you’re trying to buy a real Rolex.

The same concept applies for online retail. No matter how great you advertise your product to be, if potential customers land on your ecommerce store and your platform is shoddy or unprofessional, you won’t make the sale.

Make sure at first glance, your site instills confidence in your customers, and maintain their trust throughout their entire shopping experience. This means having professional-quality web design and the development expertise to back it up (read: no bugs. Your platform must be stable).

Want to learn more about how to get out of your customers’ way for ecommerce success? Check out our blog here.

The next level of building trust is actual site security. Your visitors need to know that they are not at risk if they enter their credit card or bank account info on your site.

Display your security credentials. Make them easy for your customers to find.

You can’t skip this step. Seriously. We mean it.

If your platform isn’t secure (or rather, its security isn’t immediately apparent to your visitors), your site will fail no matter how great your subsequent marketing efforts are.

Now that you’ve built up your potential customers trust in your site and platform, it’s time to build up credibility in terms of your product quality.

This starts with social proof.

The best way to sell your product to potential new customers is for previous customers and/or relevant experts to say great things about your product, your service, and your company.

Don’t believe us? Well, here are some pretty compelling statistics on the importance of social proof:

• Nearly 70% of all Americans report looking at customer reviews before purchasing a product [source].
• 63% of consumers say they are more likely to purchase from a site that has product ratings and reviews [source].

So provide customer ratings, reviews, and testimonials to back up your product. It’s important.

This social proof will likely push anyone on the fence over the edge and convince them to buy your product (assuming your reviews are good, that is…).

Interested in other ways to build up social proof? Check out this techcrunch article: Link to techcrunch article on social proof

Finally, display your expertise.

Instill sense of confidence in your customers that you know what you’re talking about so that they trust your claims about your product. Show that you are an expert and have done your research.

But before you make a claim about your product or service, you better make sure you can back it up.

Banded

Remember our friends at Banded? Well they do this really well too.

This headband company boasts the most advanced comfort with their patented technology: No pain, no slip, no headache. The claim that their headbands fit perfectly every time, for every head.

They don’t just make this claim, they back it up with research and consumer testing.

And of course, they provide social proof and money back guarantees to back these claims as well.

Check it out for yourself at banded2gether.com.

Don’t miss the rest of our tips for online retail marketing success: tip #4 coming soon!