Five Often-Overlooked Opportunities to Build Trust with Online Shoppers

Just because the online shopping experience precludes you from cultivating personal, face-to-face relationships with your customers, it doesn’t mean that trust is absent from the equation. In fact, just the opposite is true. Because you don’t have the advantage of engaging with your customers in person, it’s critical that you examine each aspect of your e-commerce process to ensure that you are building and reinforcing trust at every step of the way. Here are five commonly overlooked opportunities to earn the trust of online shoppers:

Transparency

From the time a customer lands on your site until the time their order reaches their doorstep, transparency is key. It’s important to ensure that you address and eliminate all potential concerns upfront. Before your customers even reach checkout, they should know how quickly their order will be processed as well as the range of available shipping options and costs. Give your customers added assurance by providing delivery timetables that are as specific as possible without compromising accuracy. For example, you might guarantee that all orders placed Monday through Friday before noon eastern time will be shipped the next business day, as long as you know that you can live up to this promise without fail. This type of information is mission-critical to shoppers who are making a time-sensitive purchase such as a birthday gift or an outfit for a special occasion. If possible, after an order has been placed, send a follow-up e-mail confirming that the shipment is on its way, and include a tracking number, too. The fewer question marks that arise between the time your customer completes their purchase and the time it arrives in their hands, the more trust you’ll build.

Packaging

When your package lands in your customers’ hands, does it give the impression that someone has taken care to make them feel they are receiving something special that has been handled and shipped with care? Or does it create the feeling that someone in a warehouse grabbed a few things off the shelf, stuck them in a plastic bag and sent them on their way, with no thought about or regard for the recipient on the other end? The quality of packaging can have a great impact on the perception of the quality not only of the product inside but of the overall buying experience. As a result, you shouldn’t think of the cost of packaging as an expense; you should approach it as an investment in earning the trust of your customers. It’s important to go the extra mile to make sure you present your products in a way that protects and enhances the value of your brand. Grove is a great example of a company that has perfected the art and science of packaging. Each handmade bamboo iPhone 4 case, which can be custom-engraved with the customer’s design of choice, arrives encased in a bamboo frame, which is actually created as a byproduct of the production process. This ingenious idea embodies everything the brand stands for – sustainability, quality, craftsmanship and authenticity – while presenting the case itself as a unique work of art.

Follow-up

The process of building trust with online shoppers doesn’t have to end when your package arrives at their doorstep. A follow-up e-mail asking them to rate your products or provide feedback on their buying experience is a simple act of consideration that conveys your genuine concern for their happiness. Netflix frequently sends subscribers e-mails asking them to rate the audio and picture quality of a movie they recently watched or to evaluate their satisfaction with the service they received when they contacted Netflix phone support.

While Netflix undoubtedly cares about measuring the quality of their services, they are also seeking to build and maintain the trust of their customers by demonstrating their commitment to delivering a great experience every time.

Returns

A generous return policy is priceless when it comes to winning the trust of online shoppers. As commonplace as the act of buying products on the Web has become, there is always still a lingering hint of uncertainty that resides with customers because they cannot see, hold and judge an item for themselves before committing to the purchase and paying the associated shipping costs. However, reassuring them that if their item arrives and is not what they expected, they can return it without question and – even better – with free shipping, shows that you are fully dedicated to ensuring their satisfaction. Not only will you build trust but you’ll also give them an added boost of buying confidence that will keep them coming back again and again. Additionally, make sure that your return policies take into consideration what happens when things don’t go exactly according to plan. If you miss your promised delivery date, don’t add insult to injury by creating headaches for a disappointed customer. Instead, win back their trust by expressing your sincere apologies and graciously offering to credit back the original shipping fees and cover the cost of return shipping.

The human touch

Sure, it's okay to automate your e-commerce processes – charging a credit card, sending order confirmation e-mails, scheduling shipments and generating tracking numbers. But throughout every step of the transaction, you must also offer your customers the safety net of being able to talk to a real person. Not only should your customer service number be available, but it should be obvious and omnipresent so that shoppers don’t have to hunt it down. While it’s tempting to bury those digits because the cost of maintaining customer service staff can cut into your profit margins, you must remember that even in today’s Digital Age, nothing builds trust quite like genuine human contact. If you’re not readily accessible to your customers, you’re running the risk of losing their business to someone who is. E-mail and online contact forms are fine options, but they shouldn’t be the only options. Keep building trust and head off the temptation to give up and go elsewhere by making sure your customers can easily make the leap from virtual interaction to personal interaction. In an age when consumers have the luxury of almost unlimited options, you can’t afford to roll the dice with your customers’ trust. Establishing clear, straightforward expectations, demonstrating care and concern for your customers’ satisfaction, following through on your promises and being readily accessible and responsive goes a long way in transforming a casual online shopper into a repeat buyer and a loyal evangelist for your brand.

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Seven Sure-Fire SEO Killers

So you have your website and you’re trying to sell your product or service. That’s great. Now you desire to get some great page ranking. That’s even better! But the problem sets in when you realize you essentially have to remake your entire site because you did some things that are completely detrimental to your search engine optimization health. What are those things?

1. Text in graphics

What happens here is most times someone falls in love with a super neat font, or perhaps you don’t know much about creating a decent layout, so you just decide you want to put some information in a picture and call it a day. I totally get it’ it’s really easy, hassle-free and gets the job done, but what many fail to realize is this is absolutely killing your search engine optimization.

The problem here is not just that it’s a horrible idea, but the way search engines work and the way you are choosing to display information just does not work together. See, search engines pretty much scan your website text to see what it is your website is about. Unfortunately, search engines cannot scan pictures and figure out what it is you are talking about. This technique is fine, of course, if you’re not saying much but if you get in the habit of creating pictures with paragraphs of text on them (or even important headers), this is a bad idea.

2. Unfriendly file names

Every website needs to have some pictures. People love to visit a site and have something to visualize. However, when using pictures, you have to save your file names so that they make sense. Far too often, you may have a graphic or a picture file name that just looks like a bunch of mumbo jumbo or isn’t really descriptive at all (i.e., “picture1.jpg”).

What you must understand is that friendly file names can actually help your SEO if you give it a fairly descriptive name. Of course you don’t want to overdo it (many say 45-60 characters is more than enough), but if it’s a picture of your product, the file name should reflect that.

3. Unfriendly URL’s

The previously mentioned principle remains the same for this concept. Sometimes people rarely take the time to actually name their inside pages. I’ve literally seen people with urls that are ‘www.mywebsite.com/insidepage2.html’ or ‘www.mywebsite.com/ab-co-XY1.php’. That’s not really helping you. Again, you want to make your url as simply descriptive as you can--nothing too long but concise and makes sense. If this your ‘About’ page, then name it that.

Also keep in mind, if you are using a content management system or blogging platform you want to make sure you have your friendly URLs turned on so they don’t look like a bunch of cryptic code.

4. Ignoring image “alt” tags

The reason you don’t have to be overly descriptive in your image file name is because you can do that by using the ‘alt’ tag. This tag pretty gives you an opportunity to describe what’s in the picture and what it’s supposed to do. Keep in mind many of our current search engines have the ability to search specifically for images. Friendly file names and good alt descriptions can make it realtively easy for your product or service picture to show up in an image search. Try to take advantage of this by utilizing this task.

It also helps with your regular SEO, because the search engine typically takes some of that into consideration when coming up with the relevancy of your website to a search query.

5. Splash pages

Honestly, in 2012, if it isn’t absolutely necessary, just avoid them. I know sometimes they are cool and sometimes it’s really nice to have something introduce your website, but if it isn’t absolutely necessary in the scheme of things, just let it go. The reason is because search engines take into account what is said on your very first page (index) when scanning your site. Most splash pages are just videos or pictures of some sort. If there’s absolutely nothing of use on it, then your site won’t rank very well.

6. Meta keywords

When creating and coding your site there is sometimes a little ‘meta’ tag that people like to put a bunch of keywords in to to try to give your page a better chance of getting a higher ranking. To be quite frank, this tag pretty much is useless now. Many search engines don’t use it as heavily weighted to determine the relevancy of your website to a query. Many years ago this may have been a factor but as of now, it isn’t really worth it.

7. Overdoing keyword density

You may have heard that you need to sprinkle your keywords all over your website or you need to make sure that at some point you refer back to your keywords some way or another. It’s definitely a good thing to keep in mind -- of course you want all your content to be as relevant as possible. But search engines are starting to take into account your keyword usage and density when determining how good your website is to a query. If you sprinkle your keywords around too much, there’s a chance a search engine can determine that you are spam site and are therefore irrelevant to any query.

This is one of those techniques that you have to be careful with because it is necessary but you cannot overdo it. The best bet is just to use a bit of common sense and try not to pile the keywords on.

 

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