How Trustworthy Is Your eCommerce Store ?
Winning online shoppers’ trust to your eCommerce store is key to a successful shopping experience, which, by default, means good branding, more traffic, and extra sales.
Because it’s YOUR store, you’ve never probably thought about store trust – how trustworthy does your online store look and sound for first-time visitors; it’s time to do so!
How many of these store trust elements does your eCommerce website cover? How many does it miss?
Create a Homepage to Impress
Display Social Proof
Add Trust Badges and Trust Seals on Checkout Page
Provide Detailed Shipping Information and Refund Policy
Provide Contact Details and Respond Promptly
Based on real responses directly to our inbox from different users from many countries, we were able to diagnose and analyze what are the factors that influence the trustworthiness of an e-commerce store and what should every store owner does to win customers’ trust and build confidence that converts passers by into loyal customers.
Ammar Hemdan, 45 yrs, Iraq, “It just feels right! The feel and look of the website seem okay and the language sounds professional. I also like high-quality images :D”
Create a Homepage to Impress
First impressions last you know, and online shoppers trust their first impression about an eCommerce website and build a positive or negative opinion about the online store based on their first visit.
Design your website’s homepage to look and sound as welcoming and professional as you could. Use proper language and avoid grammatical and spelling mistakes. Grammarly can do a pretty good job in finding and correcting language mistakes for you (for the English version of course of your eCommerce website).
High-quality images and professional shots of your products reflect a very good image about your online store . Quality images also give the online shopper a chance to inspect the product closely and check out every detail before making a purchase.
Tip ? Do not add too many high-quality images to your homepage; these images are large and take long to load, which affects the loading speed of the homepage.
An easy, user-friendly navigation from homepage to any other category and back again to the homepage is essential to win the trust of users that they can, and will, find what they’re looking for easily and fast.
A clean layout, uncluttered images, and clear category names not only reflect a trustworthy image about your online store , but also give your users an enjoyable online shopping experience.
It’s also nice to have an eCommerce store that supports more than one language. After all, it’s electronic commerce and you never know who might log into your website. English beside Arabic is a must, and add more languages depending on your target audience and country.
How Trustworthy Are ExpandCart Stores’ Homepages?
Stores built on ExpandCart automatically enjoy many features regarding the homepage that win users’ trust at once.
ExpandCart allows you to add as many high-quality images as you want, and videos as well.
The templates you choose from are all designed to be user-friendly and responsive on any device. They also include top and side menus for easy navigation. Clicking on the store icon takes you back to the homepage instantly.
ExpandCart stores support Arabic and English languages, with the ability to add more languages upon request.
You don’t need to worry about the website’s loading speed either, as it’s hosted on the best and strongest servers, Amazon Web Services (AWS), that are dedicated only to the middle east – no hanging and no slow loading speed.
Mohamed Zayed, 29 yrs, UAE, “When I find people’s reviews on the homepage, I immediately trust this website, and you know when reviews are fake or made up, you would just know!”
Display Social Proof
People are 5 times more likely to buy a product based on others’ recommendation than their own search. It’s a psychological and social phenomenon where people are influenced by the actions and attitudes of others.
So, don’t be afraid to display social proof and reviews from your customers on every page of your eCommerce website, as it reflects a good image about store trust and builds confidence within first-time visitors.
Display social proof on your website in more than one way to win users’ trust to your online store. Show messages from happy customers, pictures from satisfied clients, and videos of customers using your product; user-generated content is the best.
The website could highlight mentions of your store/products in the news media or by other trusted brands. Also adding real stats goes an extra mile about how trustworthy your online store is.
If your store has received any awards or certificates that prove credibility, feel free to place these strategically in your website so you can boost confidence in your product or service and build trust in your brand.
Tip ? Do not remove negative comments or reviews; rather, work on solving the problem and make sure to show it in the reply. People know when comments and reviews are faked and you certainly don’t want to go there.
Some of the tricks people use to catch a business if it’s lying is that they use mental math to figure out if the ratio of Instagram followers to likes feels authentic, if there are any inconsistencies or explicit warnings from previous customers, or if they find feedback that contradicts what a business says on its website.
It’s also nice to have visible links on the store to your social media profiles (Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc.).
Hessa Thwainy, 25 yrs, Kuwait, “I look for trust badges and seals, especially on the checkout page. Once I see them, I give out my credit card info right away.”
Add Trust Badges and Trust Seals on Checkout Page
Trust badges and trust seals are one of the easiest ways to show how trustworthy your eCommerce website is.
They are badges that are granted from your server provider that the servers hosting your store are secure and from the payment gateways you’re using for money transaction on your online store .
Once an online shopper knows that their sensitive data is protected, they will feel more comfortable making a purchase.
ExpandCart Stores’ Trust Badges
Ecommerce stores built on ExpandCart enjoy the highest level of internet security and payment gateways trust.
Merchants can gladly ask for the SSL certificate, which is a protocol for encrypting internet traffic and verifying server identity. Any website with an HTTPS web address uses SSL.
All ExpandCart stores can be granted the SSL certificate in order to keep user data secure, verify ownership of the website, prevent attackers from creating a fake version of the site, and gain user trust.
On the other hand, our stores are integrated with well-known and widely used payment gateways in the Middle East and the whole world, like Mastercard and Visa.
These payment gateways offer their trust badges and seals for you to display on your checkout page to enhance store trust and confidence in front of your users.
Ahmed Khattab, 55 yrs, Egypt, “After years and years of online shopping I can tell you this, once I find hidden fees or no mention of refund policy, I flee away! It’s as simple as that.”
Provide Detailed Shipping Information and Refund Policy
You need to be transparent with your customers about shipping fees , estimated delivery time , product description, and refund policy; this is of the utmost importance to take your store’s trustworthiness level to a higher level.
People are more comfortable when they all the expenses beforehand, before beginning the process of checkout.
Most shoppers in the Middle East look at online shopping as blind shopping, as long as they did not touch the product with their hands or see it with their own eyes. So, your role here is to give shoppers a trustworthy experience and convince them to head to checkout and complete purchase.
How to do this?
Detailed product description is not an option: product features, exact measurements, product weight, ingredients, warranty information, and everything related to the nature and use of it, along with pictures and a video if possible.
Display shipping fees underneath or next to product price, and mention if it’s eligible for free shipping under certain conditions (if the user’s total purchases exceed $100 for example).
Be honest with refund policy and make sure it’s obvious to the user’s eyes. Don’t worry, refunds are inseparable part in any sales cycle; it makes about 10% of total successful sales.
Write the estimated delivery time, and give notes like delay is expected depending on weather conditions or geographic location.
Basically, do not leave unanswered questions in the mind of the online shopper that would make them re-consider purchasing from your eCommerce website.
Tip ? Stores built on ExpandCart enjoy built-in integrations with reliable, well-known shipping providers in the Middle East and around the world, which puts your mind at ease with regards to shipping problems and delay complaints.
Samar Ezzat, 39 yrs, Egypt, “I always look for contact details, and sometimes I contact the website before I buy, just to make sure that I will find help if anything went wrong.”
Provide Contact Details and Respond Promptly
A legitimate store will have contact details on its site, visible and authentic.
Provide an email address that’s connected to your store name (support@mystore.com), a phone number that’s working (with the country code for users from abroad), a “contact us” form, and an address (if you have a physical office).
Did you know that some first-time website visitors actually get in touch to see if the contact details are real?
Yes, it’s true. So you better be around during working hours if you’re keen on reflecting a trustworthy image about your eCommerce store.
To Sum Up,,,
Store trust is a crucial element to take care of in the eCommerce world and among online shoppers, do not take it lightly.
Your homepage is the welcoming mat to your eCommerce website; build it to leave an impression that lasts.
Provide customers with the social proof they’re looking for about your brand and its products, as it’s essential that every business owner understands that community sentiment can be what makes or breaks the decision to purchase a product.
Trust badges and seals, visible to the users, convince an online shopper to comfortably give out their payment info and complete checkout.
Provide as much details as you can so that you answer each and every question a customer might have. Do not hide important information and be honest when it comes to shipping fees, delivery time, and refund policy.
And lastly, stores built on ExpandCart automatically enjoy all the features and built-in elements that reflect the trustworthy image every eCommerce store should display.
Build your online store with ExpandCart to enjoy marketing consultation, 24/7 customer support, and a full marketplace of apps & services tailored to every eCommerce business.
No credit card required and no hidden fees.
