Customer Confidence = Increased Sales!

When buying products online from you the consumer must have total trust in your website/company. If there is anything they are unsure of they will leave your site and buy from a competitor they are comfortable with. There are several boxes that if you can’t tick then the orders won’t come in.

This article has ways in which you can increase the confidence potential customers will have in your site. I am presuming that you have a quality design for your site and have some good products at decent prices. If you have a rubbish design then forget what’s below, just find a new web designer!

Here Are The Ways You Can Increase Customer Confidence

1. Secure Checkout - If you don’t have a secure way of processing payments on your website it is likely you won’t make any sales. It is also important all customer details are managed in a secure database protected from hackers. If customers don’t know whether your site is secure then they won’t risk it. The best way to show them your site is secure is to get an image of a padlock with text over the top, something like ’secure checkout’, and place it in your sidebar so it is visible on every page. Then create a new page which tells visitors about the 128bit secure shopping cart and that shopping with you is safe.
2. Clear Contact Details - on every page of your site there should be a clear link to your contact details page, on this page ideally you should have; an email address, phone number & address. If you run your dropship business from home you may not want to put your address on the site, this is understandable. If possible put the dropshippers address for order returns (if the dropshipper allows this).
3. Customer Guarantees - Making guarantees to your customers are very powerful for gaining sales. The best guarantee is a ‘100% refund’ if the customer isn’t happy. This gives more confidence in your service and the potential customer will think ‘even if I don’t like it I can send it back’. There are other guarantees which you can make E.G ‘if the product says on our website that it is in stock then we guarantee to dispatch it within 48hrs’.
4. Previous Customer Testimonials - You can get existing customers to leave feedback on their own experiences of shopping on your website. Send a quick e-mail out to all your previous customers asking for a testimonial. If you don’t get a good response you could offer an incentive E.G 10% off your next order. It is then wise to make your testimonials well exposed, even having one or two on your homepage is a good idea.
5. Overall Professional Service - This is simply bringing everything together. You have a professional looking website with good products at competitive prices, contact details are clear, secure shopping logo is shining and banners with customer guarantees are on every page! A customer emails you and you reply within 12hrs, they order the product they asked about and your dropshipper sends it the next day…….they love the product and leave a testimonial, you reinvest your profit getting more visitors!

It will take time to get your ecommerce website exactly how it needs to be to completely install confidence in all visitors. However it is vital to how many sales you make, if visitors are comfortable ordering from you then the good products will sell, and your business will grow.