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How to Build Trust With E-Commerce Customers
Online consumers worry about purchasing from websites. Here's how to diminish their fears.
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Are you having difficulty convincing visitors to your e-commerce site to make a purchase? If you are confident in your product and business processes, maybe what you are missing is trust.
Online consumers have legitimate fears about purchasing online. However, by focusing on protecting your customers, enhancing the user experience, improving your online reputation, updating your website design and honing your e-commerce marketing strategy, you can significantly boost their trust. Let’s look at the best strategies for building online trust for your business and why it’s vital for success.
How to build trust with online e-commerce customers
To retain online customers’ loyalty and business, it’s crucial to build their trust. Here are a few surefire ways to do so.
Protect your customers’ data.
Consumers want to ensure that their personal data, especially their credit card information, is closely guarded. Some people shop only on sites they know are secure. To protect your e-commerce website and your customers’ data, you can use a trusted e-commerce platform, adopt cybersecurity software, and train your employees on best practices for cybersecurity and privacy.
Reduce uncertainties, and live up to your customers’ product expectations.
Provide detailed, accurate information about products and delivery time to ensure your customers’ expectations align with the products they receive. For example, you may want to provide details about materials, size and care instructions for clothing items. For electronics, you could provide instructions for using the features and functions.
“The goal is to provide crystal-clear product information, with detailed descriptions, high-resolution images and comprehensive policies around shipping, returns and warranties,” said Peter-Jan Celis, founder and chairman of Judge.me.
In addition, to optimize the user experience, you must present the product accurately. If the photo of the product is enlarged to show detail instead of representing the actual size of the product, such as a pendant, you should note this on the product page.
For some product categories, such as tech products, you also may post product videos on your company’s website and social media sites. Video marketing can build trust in your brand and give your customers a better sense of the product’s features and how to use them.
Foster positive electronic word of mouth for your company, brand and products.
Today’s consumers rely on each other’s opinions to purchase online. They may look at review sites to evaluate the company or product ratings or ask their social media friends for product recommendations.
Many consumers would rather trust their friends’ and other consumers’ opinions than advertisements and other promotional materials. Thus, you must foster positive electronic word of mouth (eWOM) for your company by providing high-quality products or services, engaging with your customers and offering effective customer care via customers’ preferred channels. Positive online reviews and ratings can help you build trust online.
Enhance your website design.
Consumers often view poorly organized sites as untrustworthy, so ensure that your company’s website is professional, up to date and well organized. It should be easy for your customers to navigate your e-commerce site and find the products they need.
Present your products in an organized way, and provide accurate, current information about them. Check your website regularly for dead links, and remove them to ensure that all of the information customers find on your site is current.
You also need to reduce friction on your e-commerce website and provide a seamless checkout process for your online customers. This can prevent shopping-cart abandonment, which has reached a rate of more than 70 percent, according to Statista.
You can increase your site’s speed, offer multiple payment options, improve your website’s design, simplify the sales process and make your site mobile-friendly. With a well-designed website, you can generate leads, increase sales and build customers’ trust by giving them a painless online shopping experience.
Work on your content marketing.
You can create and distribute relevant and valuable content to increase your brand awareness and credibility, attract new customers and engage with your existing customers. Post informative content — such as research articles, infographics, webinars, videos and podcasts — on your business’s website and social media pages. Videos can enhance your marketing strategy and show your customers how to use your products.
Your posts should be original, up to date, informative, educational and relevant to your audience. With credible content, you demonstrate your thought leadership in your industry, enhance your company’s credibility and build your audience’s trust in your organization.
Never plagiarize articles from other organizations’ websites; you must respect other companies’ copyrights and the original authors’ intellectual property. If your audience finds out, it will be a significant breach of trust. Robust and original content can help you build online trust with your key audience. [Read related: A Step-by-Step Guide to Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses]
Display verified reviews on your website.
“Real customer reviews are essential,” Celis said. “They give potential buyers honest opinions from people who have already bought and used the product, helping them make confident decisions while browsing your products.”
Celis stressed the importance of displaying your verified reviews so they’re front and center for prospective customers to read. “By displaying verified reviews, responding promptly to both positive and negative feedback, and demonstrating a genuine commitment to customer satisfaction, businesses can transform a potentially impersonal online shopping experience into one that feels trustworthy and reliable,” he said.
Be proactive with feedback.
It’s not enough to just respond to your customers’ feedback. To build trust in your business, implement their feedback into your future decisions. For example, if multiple customers complain about the same issue, such as slow delivery, demonstrate ways you will address this problem and actually act on it. This will ensure that customers don’t feel like their complaints are falling on deaf ears.
“Businesses should actively encourage customers to share their experiences by making the review process simple and rewarding,” Celis said. “This means not just passively collecting feedback but actively engaging with it — thanking customers for positive reviews and professionally addressing concerns raised in negative ones.”
Engage in consistent communication with customers.
Many businesses make the mistake of communicating with their customers only when they need something. However, by continuing to touch base with them, you will create a more personal, less transactional relationship.
“Consistent, clear and honest communication is key,” said Jesse Frimpong, CEO and founder of Prestige Knowledge LLC. “Customers need to know that you’re not just around when it’s time to make a sale, but you’re there to provide value, answer questions and guide them through their journey.”
Great customer service at each point of the buyer’s journey helps each customer feel supported, which, in turn, builds trust in your brand.
Create a sense of community for your customers.
People like to feel that they belong. By cultivating a sense of community among your customers, you’ll foster a deeper connection built on shared trust.
“Giving seats in exclusive webinars, private groups or early access to new products makes customers feel like insiders,” Frimpong said. “Special deals, loyalty rewards, competitive pricing and exclusive offers tailored for returning customers show that you care about nurturing long-term relationships instead of short-term gains.”
Additionally, getting to know your e-commerce customers in person will allow you to actually engage with them, thus putting a face to your business. “Hosting meetups, pop-ups and in-person events allows customers to meet not just the business owners but also each other, fostering a true sense of community,” Frimpong explained. “Building a community and a strong culture around the brand makes customers feel like they are part of something bigger than just a transaction.”
Humanize your brand.
Many business owners make the mistake of marketing their business as just that: a business. However, today’s customers want to know and connect with the brand they’re investing in.
“A quick way to build trust is to really humanize the brand, showing your team, story and values,” said Matt Satell, director of e-commerce at RushOrderTees. “You should create content that really connects with that side of the human brain, such as behind-the-scenes videos and customer spotlights.”
Don’t be just another robotic company that prioritizes transactions over human connection, Frimpong said. “Don’t chase sales. Instead, chase value,” he advised. “Focus on helping people, whether that’s through education, entertainment, inspiration or service. When you focus on genuinely improving your customers’ lives, they’ll feel that energy and trust you.”
Why building trust is critical for e-commerce businesses
Here are some of the many reasons it’s vital for e-commerce businesses to build and maintain trust.
Trust helps you stand out among your competitors.
Today’s e-commerce environment is competitive, and the e-commerce market is continuously growing. In fact, recent statistics from Statista show that e-commerce sales in the U.S. totaled over $300 billion between October and December 2024.
“In today’s rapidly expanding world of e-commerce and social media, competition is at an all-time high,” Frimpong said. “Every day, more brands are fighting for the same customers’ attention, and the ones that stand out go beyond simply offering a product.”
Today’s consumers can easily compare products and prices online and read reviews to see what customers think. To thrive in such a competitive environment, you have to build online trust for your brand with customers and maintain positive customer relations. [Learn how to sustain and grow customer relationships.]
Trust allows you to compete with the in-person shopping experience.
Compared with in-store shopping, consumers encounter more uncertainty when they shop online, for several reasons. For example, some people are concerned about credit card security and privacy issues. Additionally, these customers can’t physically see or touch the products. Sometimes, the products they receive are not quite what they expected. They also need to wait for the products to be delivered.
Because online shoppers face these uncertainties, they want to buy products only from the online vendors they trust. “In physical retail, customers can interact with the products and with staff in person, giving more touchpoints and opportunities to build that trust,” Satell said. “Online, customers rely entirely on what they can see and feel through a screen — and if a customer doesn’t trust a website, they won’t convert.”
Trust addresses concerns about automated marketing and customer service.
With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), many brands are outsourcing important business practices, triggering distrust from consumers. With all of the targeted ads on social media, many customers fear investing in a company they don’t know or trust.
“AI tools make it easier than ever for brands to automate marketing, messaging and even customer service, but this also can lead to impersonal, robotic interactions,” Frimpong said. “Customers are becoming more skeptical and can easily detect when they’re being ‘sold to’ by an algorithm rather than engaged by a real brand that cares about them. That’s why trust, culture and community are no longer optional; they are critical to long-term success.”
Julie Thompson and Ming-Yi Wu contributed to this article.
