Build Customer Trust: 13 Proven Strategies

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Building trust with customers is crucial for any business to succeed. In this guide, we’ll explore 13 effective strategies to help you build strong and lasting trust with your customers. From delivering excellent service to being transparent and reliable, these proven methods to build customer trust will help you establish a solid foundation of trust with your audience.

In ecommerce, reinsurance refers to all the actions carried out by an e-merchant to create or strengthen the confidence of visitors to his website in order to secure them and promote the act of purchase.

To succeed in your strategy to gain customer trust, you have to be able to put yourself in the shoes of your visitors and potential customers. When you own an online store, the main difficulty is to make people want to buy without having had the product in hand. Online stores must use a particular strategy to build customer trust and use the elements of reassurance to win over and gain the trust of users.

Without this relationship, sales don’t take off. To increase your e-commerce turnover, have good practices and adapted approaches.

Let’s dive in and discover how you can strengthen the bond between your business and your customers.

How Do You Build Customer Trust: 13 Rules

Building trust with customers is crucial for any business. Trust makes customers feel confident in your brand and more likely to choose your products or services. Here, we’ll explore 13 simple rules to help you build strong trust with your customers, paving the way for long-lasting relationships and success for your business.

Rule # 1: Put Yourself in the Shoes of Customers

When choosing the product for your e-commerce site, you have probably done an audit:

Thanks to this analysis, it is possible for your company to stand out and have an adapted communication. Don’t leave these studies out. They can be of great help in having an impactful message and gaining customer trust.

In an ecommerce build customer trust strategy, key concepts must be highlighted, such as:

• secure purchase,
• Delivery methods,
• Rules concerning returns and refunds or
• Even points of contact (after-sales service, telephone number). phone, email, chat).

It is necessary to understand their fears. Depending on your product or service, look at the barriers that exist on each page.

Perform site navigation audits to identify those that may be holding back a purchase. It is essential for the success of your business to look into the necessary elements of building customer trust.

• What are the things that users expect to see on your website?
• Guarantee?
• Different payment methods?
• Being able to try the product and send it back if it doesn’t fit?

Through this analysis, you will be able to define a strategy for building trust with customers. Offer the best insurance with speedy processing of their requests. The requirements are different depending on your offer and the targets.

In building your consumer trust strategy, do not hesitate to be curious and observe those existing on the market.

• What are the practices of your competitors?
• What are their arguments and their proposition?

Your development also involves questionnaires and tests. Dare to ask the opinion of Internet users to determine what they like and what they need to see to buy.

Rule # 2: Importance of Institutional Pages to gain customer trust

To give you a precise idea of ​​the institutional pages, here is a non-exhaustive list:

• About Us or Company Overview
• FAQ Section
• Legal Notices
• Terms and Conditions
• Contact Us or Contact Information

Why is it important to work on these pages? Often they are not worked on or sloppy. We often think that these are pages having no persuasive force. And yet, in an ecommerce consumer trust building strategy, it is fundamental to look into it. They prove to visitors that you are serious, declared, but above all a reliable business that will not steal or rip them off.

When you buy stuff online, a big worry is if you’ll actually get what you ordered. So, it’s important to tell people about your company. Share:

• Who you are, where you’re based,
• How your website started,
• What you believe in, and what makes your brand special.

These details not only show that you’re trustworthy but also make your website feel more personal. You can include pictures of your team or products and explain how things work behind the scenes. Being open helps people feel confident buying from you and builds a connection with them.

Rule # 3: Keep Promises: Two Factors To Consider

Before deciding to buy something online, people are careful about how they’ll pay for it and when they’ll get it delivered. They want to make sure their money is safe and that they’ll receive their purchase on time.

1. Payment

This is a sensitive subject. It is difficult for consumers to enter bank details on the internet for two reasons:

• The fear of being robbed.
• The fear of being hacked and exposing your banking information to strangers.

To gain customers trust, highlight the secure payment on your page through the mention “secure”. It must appear several times in strategic places. Also highlight different methods such as Visa, Mastercard and PayPal, as well as payment options in several installments.

To complete your approach, summarize all the possible options on the product sheets, from the basket or in the order confirmation email sent. Users must access this data in all stages of the customer journey.

2. The Delivery

For delivery, include delivery information at the start of the customer journey. To increase your site and page conversions, avoid waiting for the cart.

Consumers want quick access to the product. If you indicate that the shipment takes place in two days, this indication motivates the purchase. On the contrary, if there is no information, the user remains in doubt and mistrust.

He can think of going to the store opposite to get one more quickly.

Be careful, you must be consistent and keep the promises of your site. The words must be realistic. Don’t promise 2 days if you are based in China, they will be suspicious of you.

Also, if you can’t afford the shipping costs, be clear and transparent. Indicate the prices as soon as possible. This approach avoids creating frustration when checking out and abandoning the cart without buying.

The essentials relating to delivery: 

• Delivery delay
• Shipping fees
• Different methods: home, relay point, post office…
• Return conditions
• Repayment Terms
• Package tracking 
• Regulation concerning disputes (broken objects, omissions, loss of packages, etc.)

Rule # 4: Create Proximity with Live Chat

Humanize your offer and your approach. Remember, when people visit your website, they don’t have face-to-face contact with sellers who can offer advice. Everything is online, so it’s important to create a friendly and helpful digital experience.

It is therefore fundamental to gain buyers trust and show them that they are not alone in having points of contact. Live Chat is a great option. It allows the customer to have a live answer to his question.

In two clicks, the user is in contact with a professional or a representative of the site. Live Chat cannot be replaced by FAQ. The approach here is to humanize and advise the client in his choices.

Rule # 5: Take Care of Your Online Reputation with Customer Reviews

Digital selling, like selling in a physical store, is driven by the opinions of others. When looking for a restaurant, many people turn to TripAdvisor to find that gem. For the reassurance of an e-commerce site, the experiences of other users must be valued.

As the saying goes “the world attracts the world”. The more customer reviews your ecommerce has, the more sales will increase.

Through the internet and social networks, brands are more exposed to negative reviews. You should know that they have great potential.

This is also information they are looking for. Why? The negative review is interesting because it shows how your business handled the situation. The source of the problem is not important. The main thing here is to provide a solution and show that your business is able to bounce back in the event of the unexpected. Learn about How To Respond To Customers Reviews?

Rule # 6: Focus on Confidentiality

With digitalization, they feel they don’t have control over the information companies have. Promote a personal data protection policy to gain customer trust.

Consumers should feel that their data is important. This goes through the cookie harvest banner. Give all the information in the terms of use of your site.

To go further, different techniques:

• Request only the necessary information.
• Impose elements when creating passwords: special characters, numbers, uppercase and minimum letters. Your customers’ data is thus protected.

Rule # 7: Create a Brand Image With Strong Storytelling

As mentioned above, prospects need to know who they’re dealing with. So that they can trust you and identify with your offer, put in place a storytelling strategy. This aims to tell the story of your company, to highlight your background, values, codes and DNA.

In your cards, imagine a scenario:

• Why do you want to sell this product?
• What is its story?
• Where was it created?
• Who is it for?

A good strategy to build customer trust is to humanize your products. One of the brands that do this very well is Oasis. All the fruits have a personality, a history and twists and turns. At your scale, adapt this approach to strengthen the identification of visitors to your products.

Using content marketing in E-commerce is a winning strategy to raise awareness, Increase Online Reputation and generate conversions.

Rule # 8: Promoting Product Sheets

Beyond storytelling, they must be supplemented with reinsurance data.

• Dimensions
• Colors
• Compositions
• Origin / manufacturing area
• The instructions / usage
• The advantages and benefits
• Customer reviews
• The presence of photos and videos.

They show the transparency of your business and reassure prospects about what they are going to buy.

They must be optimized for Ecommerce SEO by using SEO Tools, customers and online conversion.

Rule # 9: Be Easily Reachable: The Place of After-Sales

Before buying online, the main fear is that you have a problem with the purchase. It is essential from the start to show potential customers that you are available.

Highlight all your touch points like a form, email, phone number or your social networks.

Rule # 10: Site Speed

A slow site scares people away. If you don’t improve your page load times, sales will crash.

Prospects will not wait for your site to load and fill out bank details. On the contrary, they will go to the competition to find what they need.

A quick site shows professionalism. Don’t dwell on the design, colors and options. Your priority is loading pages. This must be less than two seconds.

Rule # 11: The Impact of Videos

Videos are very persuasive. In minutes, prospects can see how the product works and take ownership of it faster.

For example, in video, the dimensions and proportions are easy to understand.

Thanks to this communication medium, your company strengthens its brand image and its customer-friendly approach.

By using video, you can also generate views on Youtube and generate visibility to your site.

Rule # 12: Don’t Scare Away with Aggressive Visuals

In an e-commerce gaining customers trust approach, users should not be hassled to buy. This feeling will create mistrust. They shouldn’t feel like you’re running after their money.

To do this, avoid aggressive pop-ups and advertisements. Your strategy is not to scare them away.

Rule # 13: Importance of Support Customer Service After Purchase

The sale does not stop after the purchase. The customer has not yet received their product. You have passed the first step, but your offer still has everything to prove. Don’t think it’s all won. On the contrary, there is everything to do.

• Are you interested in the shipment?
• Has the customer received their purchase?
• Does he have any suggestions for improving the service?

This step is part of customer loyalty. But this tracking allows you to gain customer confidence. Who knows: they’ll likely leave a comment, review, or reorder.

Summary List: Additional Ways to Build Customer Trust

1. Excellent Customer Service: Provide timely, helpful, and empathetic assistance to address customer needs and concerns effectively.
2. Deliver on Promises: Consistently fulfill commitments and deliver high-quality products or services as promised to build reliability and credibility.
3. Transparency: Be open and honest about your business practices, policies, and processes to establish trustworthiness and foster transparency.
4. Consistency: Maintain consistency in your actions, communication, and service delivery to reinforce reliability and reliability over time.
5. Listen and Respond: Actively listen to customer feedback, address their concerns promptly, and demonstrate responsiveness to their needs to show that their opinions matter.
6. Personalization: Offer personalized experiences and solutions tailored to individual customer preferences and needs to enhance rapport and connection.
7. Apologize and Rectify: Acknowledge mistakes, apologize sincerely, and take corrective actions to resolve issues promptly and rebuild trust after any breaches.
8. Speak Customer’s Language: Communicate using language and messaging that resonates with your customers, reflecting their values, preferences, and cultural context to foster connection and understanding.
9. Build Relationships: Invest in building long-term relationships with customers based on mutual respect, trust, and understanding to cultivate loyalty and advocacy.
10. Demonstrate Integrity: Uphold ethical standards, maintain integrity in your business dealings, and prioritize honesty and fairness to earn and retain customer trust.

Conclusion: How Can You Build Customer Trust?

In conclusion, building customer trust is essential for any business’s success. By implementing proven strategies such as providing excellent customer service, delivering on promises, being transparent, and prioritizing integrity, businesses can establish strong relationships with their customers. Trust forms the foundation of loyalty and repeat business, ultimately leading to sustainable growth and prosperity. Remember, trust is earned over time through consistent actions and genuine care for the customer’s needs and concerns.