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Putting Your Web Site Customers At Ease And Building Trust

A recent survey of 1000 shoppers in the UK, as reported at IMRG, stated that 89% of online shoppers cite trust and security as their main buying influences for choosing where to spend their hard earned money online! They need to know that your company will take care of their concerns before, during and after they have purchased from you.

It is absolutely essential that you foster trust with your online customers.

For example,

  • You should tell customer clearly how to contact you.
  • You should tell customers how you´ll store their information and who will have access to it.
  • You should design your site to take customers simply and swiftly by the hand straight to the checkout.
  • While you may not want to admit that your machines do break down at times, you can build trust by telling customers exactly how to contact you and exactly what you´ll do if the unlikely happens and something does go wrong!

Simple, transparent and honest information can be the difference between a customer buying from your web site or going elsewhere.

Fasten Your Seatbelts

Some organisations go to great lengths to reduce anxiety and build trust in their customers. Take airlines for example. They have perfected the art of making customers feel at ease at what could be an anxious time.

But the show they put on may running thin. I loved this this take ( from Seth Godin´s blog) on what might happen if their information was simple, transparent and honest!

 

“GOOD morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are delighted to welcome you aboard Veritas Airways, the airline that tells it like it is. Please ensure that your seat belt is fastened, your seat back is upright and your tray-table is stowed. At Veritas Airways, your safety is our first priority. Actually, that is not quite true: if it were, our seats would be rear-facing, like those in military aircraft, since they are safer in the event of an emergency landing. But then hardly anybody would buy our tickets and we would go bust.

...

Your life-jacket can be found under your seat, but please do not remove it now. In fact, do not bother to look for it at all. In the event of a landing on water, an unprecedented miracle will have occurred, because in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made successful landings on water is zero. This aircraft is equipped with inflatable slides that detach to form life rafts, not that it makes any difference. Please remove high-heeled shoes before using the slides. We might as well add that space helmets and anti-gravity belts should also be removed, since even to mention the use of the slides as rafts is to enter the realm of science fiction.

Please switch off all mobile phones, since they can interfere with the aircraft’s navigation systems. At least, that’s what you’ve always been told. The real reason to switch them off is because they interfere with mobile networks on the ground, but somehow that doesn’t sound quite so good. On most flights a few mobile phones are left on by mistake, so if they were really dangerous we would not allow them on board at all, if you think about it..."