SPECIAL COMMENTARY
Can Consumers Trust My Online Store?
By Chris Barr, EVP of Marketing at MerchantAdvantage
For online shoppers, trust is everything. And for those consumers who won’t shop online, trust is the only thing. We know this instinctively – we even practice it in our own lives. But what does it actually add up to for an e-commerce merchant?
Here’s one measurement: according to a survey released last month, by Javelin Strategy and Research a general fear of online shopping and identity theft caused retailers to miss out on $21 BILLION in online sales in 2008, a chunk approximately equal to 10% of the total market. Especially in perilous economic times, getting your fair piece of that 10% can change the color of your bottom line.
Trust is a tricky thing: it can be lost in an instant, but attaining it in the first place is pretty complex and time-consuming. That’s no less true for the relationship between merchant and consumer than it is between spouses or business partners. So what’s an online retailer to do? Our purpose here is to identify some simple tools and techniques that can help inspire confidence among your customers (and potential customers.) You can use this as a checklist to evaluate how well your own operation is addressing and overcoming the inevitable skepticism that virtually all consumers have about shopping online.
We'll start with some characteristics of your website that will not be startling revelations to you – but which you may have come to take for granted. Are you doing the following things better than your competitors are?
1. Provide a Privacy Policy
Inform online shoppers that you respect the privacy of their personal information through a written policy that is both easy to find and easy to understand. This is definitely not the place to unveil your fanciest legal mumbo jumbo; instead you want a crystal clear statement that you will protect their data. In the Javelin survey, forty percent of all online consumers believe you will sell their personal information, and fifty percent believe they will receive junk mail for the rest of their lives. Tell them very clearly that you don’t and they won’t. Smart retailers are also providing a “Statement of Ethics” that lays out their methods and policies for doing business. Include an unambiguous statement of your company’s Terms of Sale and Return Policies.
2. Provide Essential Contact Information.
List your e-mail address, physical location, telephone number and fax number in an easy-to-find place on your website. If a live representative does not answer your phone 24 hours a day, leave a message that specifies the hours in which a customer can reach a live person. Make it a priority that customer contacts are responded to very quickly; the speed of your reply will be seen as an indicator of how important individual customer care is to your company. And try to avoid funneling customers into your FAQ section – it’s important and efficient to have a well-structured FAQ page (and your customer’s question probably is answered there), but someone who takes the time to write or call personally wants to be responded to personally.
The sites most assertively servicing customer queries now offer “live chat” with an online representative who responds in real time to the questions and concerns of potential buyers. It’s a fact that establishing back-and-forth communication with a customer is a first big step in creating a long-lasting relationship with them. There are many resources for helping you provide a live chat mechanism on your site: to begin to get a feel, check out LivePerson, ZaZaChat, and LiveSalesman.
3. Toll-Free Phone Number
Invest in a toll-free phone number and post it on your website. A toll-free number signifies that you’re easy to reach and extremely interested in your client’s concerns. It also increases the comfort level of those potential customers who are uneasy about making online purchases, because they know they can speak to a real person to complete the transaction if they want to.
4. Highlight your affiliation with reputable third parties...
like the Better Business Bureau or your local Chamber of Commerce; also mention your membership in ECMTA or trade associations specific to your industry, because these suggest that there are formal codes and standards with which you have chosen to comply. Whether you sell pool equipment or pet supplies, there’s a trade association just waiting for you to display their logo on your site.
Another dimension of third party affiliation might be your decision to support a charitable effort, one with national recognition or one that’s specifically close to either your own heart or to the product category you provide. Pet products again? How about the Humane Society. Building Products? Habitat for Humanity. Women’s apparel? The Susan G. Koman Foundation. Giving back to the community IS a good thing, and it’s also PERCEIVED to be a good thing – your customers will like and trust you a little bit more.
5. Security Certification.
This one’s just a little more complicated but is a major step forward in reassuring your customers of their safety in your hands. What you’re looking for is a provider of SSL technology (secure sockets layer, now also called Transport Layer Security) so that the pages on your site which require sensitive customer information (like credit card numbers) are transmitted through an encrypted link so that the data cannot be stolen.
"If you collect ANY personal or confidential information, an SSL Certificate is vital for you and your customers because it encrypts the sensitive information," said GoDaddy.com President and COO Warren Adelman. "An SSL certificate helps build trust by showing your customers you care about their data."
You will want to display the logo of the Certificate Authority you select on your site, and the consumer will also see the padlock icon in the lower right corner of the page. Clicking on the lock will display your company’s SSL certificate and the details about it. There are dozens of Certificate Authorities to choose from – comparison shopping is easy on the internet.
Check out GoDaddy, VeriSign, Thawte, GeoTrust, Comodo, Globalsign, and/or Network Solutions, among others.
6. Bond Guarantee
Another “seal” that boosts a customer’s confidence level is available by becoming part of the buySAFE network of bonded merchants. The seal can only be used by merchants who have been “verified;” clicking on the seal validates its authenticity as well as the merchant’s trustworthiness. The consumer knows they are buying merchandise backed by a bond guarantee from the Bonded Merchants group.
7. Product Reviews
Consumers respond enthusiastically to feedback from other "regular people" who have purchased products like the ones they’re considering on your site. Increased conversion, traffic and average order value are direct benefits of posting product reviews on your site – all of which are simply by-products of increased trust and comfort level. There are a number of Product Review Solutions available to make this process easy to implement; start by taking a look at PowerReviews.
Darby Williams, VP of Marketing for Power Reviews, tells MerchantAdvantage: “Our research shows that shoppers have significantly more confidence in online purchases when they can read 5 or more customer reviews, know that these customers actually bought the product (e.g. PowerReviews’ “Verified Buyer” certification), and see a few “cons” or negative comments in some of the reviews.”
So trust us on this: addressing the widespread concerns about the security of online shopping is a terrific opportunity for you to shine. None of these ideas and solutions are rocket science, and none are prohibitively expensive. Most if not all of them apply to you, and implementing this kind of program (or verifying that your current program is in good shape) can only have positive, tangible benefits for your business.
Two pieces of good news: many of you are doing a decent job of this already, and the “step up” to doing a really good job is not complicated. Take a look at the bottom of the homepage for B&H Photo & Video and count how many of the above issues are addressed here, then do the same at Blinds.com. Neither is perfect, of course – can you identify potential improvements based on this discussion? – but they are excellent examples to be guided by.
Next time we’re on the topic of customer relationships, we’ll be looking at the tools that can turn the expression “we listen to our customers” into more than just lip service. You want them to believe you are listening, but there are even better reasons for you to pay attention to what they might be telling you.
Trust us on that too.
- Chris Barr
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