Ecommerce or internet commerce is becoming efficient day by day. There are more than 5 billion online shopping portals and this count is elevating everyday, stressed Kanu Iroegbu, a Certified Digital Marketing Consultant.
According to him, one of the most important ingredients for an ecommerce site is its design. “The website design should be adorable and at the same time, understandable. A stunning website exerts a pull on the visitors at their first sight.
“The website design is an important aspect for intensifying the traffic to the site. If the website has all the essential elements that are requisite, then the time a visitor stays on the website also increases.
“As we are moving with time the numbers of online users are continuously increasing. This rising trend of ecommerce serves as good opportunities to gain maximum profit for online retailers on the other hand it also help in facilitating users. The below article give a brief overview of an insight to the online retailers that help business owner in carrying out the business at right direction,” he said.
Although eCommerce is seeing exponential growth, Iroegbu said that, users are becoming careful when making purchases online. With so many helpful guides available, people can determine very quickly, often within a split second, whether a website is authentic or not. So, what can you do to provide customers with piece of mind?
Thus, he identified the six (6) factors which can help eCommerce websites demonstrate their legitimacy online.
1. Real Reviews from Real People
A great way to establish that you are running a legitimate business with great products is to ask your customers for reviews. Although this may be hard to believe, humans tend to trust each other and believe it when others say that a certain product is great. In fact, it’s better to feature reviews of other people on your website than slick marketing copy. According to a great infographic from PeopleClaim, after search, ratings and reviews are the second most important site feature and 71% of customers agree that reviews make them more comfortable that they are buying the right product.
In the age of social media, it’s quite important that reviews are validated; so, it’s a good idea to link it to the reviewers Twitter or Facebook profiles. A tweet or post from a Twitter or Facebook fan will lend credibility to your brand, more than an anonymous post ever could. Despite all the positives, reviews can and will often be bad. It doesn’t matter if a small minority of your customers don’t like your products. What matters is how you handle these customers. Don’t ignore their comments or feedback, provide positive assurances, and you may even turn an angry customer into a loyal one.
2. Celebrity Endorsements
Similarly, you can also request famous influencers to write a few words about your product. If a potential visitor sees a review of your product from a celebrity, they will immediately associate your product with a trusted face. Skin care brand Proactiv has a page dedicated to celebrity endorsements. Although you may feel as though the testimonials on this page are paid for (and they probably were), these are still famous people who are willing to entrust an important asset (their skin) to Proactiv.
3. Press Mentions
Being recognized by your customers is great for validation, but it’s also useful to highlight any media coverage you get. Simply putting logos of the websites that have featured you is an effective way of telling visitors that your product has been reviewed by professionals. Tictail does a great job of this by providing small images to all the blogs and newspapers it has been featured in, as well as picking out choice quotes.
4. Social Engagement
Since the prevalence of social media, nothing is more powerful for a brand than an army of vocal followers. Facebook’s “Facepile” plugin is an aesthetically pleasing way of showing all your product’s fans. The “faces” on the plugin aren’t chosen at random; if the visitor is logged into their Facebook account, the faces are usually of their friends. A familiar face can go a long way in providing legitimacy on a website.
The number of Facebook fans or Twitter followers you have should not be the only barometer of your brand’s success, but it offers visitors an unbiased, quantitative metric as to the authenticity of your site. If you only have a few hundred followers it could be that your brand is new or not enough people care about it. In contrast, if you have thousands of followers it’s clear that a lot of people find your products useful.
5. Putting a Face to your Brand
Highlighting the different people in your team is important in building trust. If your employees are using social media and have their own personal web presence it will add legitimacy to your website. It’s also going to make it highly unlikely that such a user is a scam artist. Displaying the team members in a prominent manner also demonstrates that the company is being transparent. In contrast, scammers will usually obscure their identity, hiding behind layers of anonymity.
6. Social Proofing your Products
Social proofing is an important concept in both offline and online retail. If a potential customer is shown how others have contributed, they will be provided with a cue on how to act. In offline retail, store owners may suggest that their stock is almost sold out, indicating popularity for a particular item. Similarly, in an online context, eCommerce websites can use tactics to point potential customers in the direction of popular products.