Instilling credibility is essential in your e-commerce website.
Let me get into the three basic ways you can do that, and then we'll go into the more advanced
parameters.
Number one, you want to have functionality first.
Obviously, you want your online store to be well functioning.
You don't want the links to be broken.
You want the search bar to work.
You want the load time to be a good load time.
There are a lot of websites you can go to check on that load time.
Number one, functionality first.
Make sure your website is actually working well and efficiently.
Number two, the second point is obviously design.
You want a design that's clean, that's professional looking, that instills confidence.
The best way to do that is compare with obviously the benchmarks, like Amazon.
You want a clear header with the categories, the subcategories.
Have the search bar right there, the shopping cart.
Design is very important.
What I advise you to do is basically buy a theme.
There are tons of themes out there.
You can even find free ones that are very good.
Get a professional theme to help you with that side of the process.
Lastly, an important part of getting a professional website is the content.
If you have an eCommerce website, first of all you want the actual content description
of the products to be accurate.
To be without any mistakes and stuff like that.
You want the product qualities to be amazing.
You want to take good quality products and not just the photos that come with the shoes
or whatever that you're selling.
The content is very important, and you should get if possible a copywriter.
If not, there are also available resources online like CopyHacker.com.
But you really want to make sure that your content is top notch.
I told you the first basic parts you need to have to instill credibility.
The next steps are very important.
First of all, you want to have an SSE, SSL, TSL certificate.
You can get some from trusted sources like Trustee, for example.
Like VeriSign.
There are also open source alternatives that are free.
But you want to have an SSL certificate.
Number two, third party payment processors.
Obviously, everybody knows PayPal.
That's a good first choice.
But you also need a second one which would be for example Authorize.net or Braintree.
Number three, you want to leverage other brands.
In both of these cases, SSL certificates and third party processors, you're going to want
to put PayPal there.
You're going to want to put the SSL certificate badge somewhere.
You want to have Authorize.net badge somewhere on the page and maybe in the footer to really
show people that you have them.
The only important thing isn't to have it, but to show it.
The fourth point you want to look into is have an important and detailed "About Us"
page.
Detail what the business is about .Detail the information, the philosophy.
Put an address up there.
Don't put bogus information.
Have a phone number if possible on the main page.
A 1-800 number is always better.
Another important thing is live chat.
More and more websites are having that.
It really instills credibility because the shoppers can know that if they have a question,
they can just chat with an agent that's there for them.
The next part is about customer reviews.
If you can have customers reviewing your product and actually saying that they had a great
experience.
Once again, real genuine comments.
Even photos of those customers, that's going to be very important.
A trend that we see also coming out is social kind of backing where you have plug ins of
Facebook where people can like your actual eCommerce website with their profile.
You see that, and if you have 600 people liking your eCommerce platform, well that gives it
instant credibility.
The other point that you want to look into is the guarantees.
If you can give guarantees such as a money back guarantee, free shipping, or you can
return the product if you're not happy, that's great.
Customers are going to be a lot more confident.
The last point is transparency.
You want to be as transparent as possible.
Throughout the whole process you want to be transparent.
Let me give you an example.
If you're in the checkout process, be clear about how many steps there are.
Be clear about the cost.
Be clear about the shipping.
Be clear about the taxes.
You want to have number one, for example, review your order, billing and shipping, and
then payment information, and then make sure everything is complete.
It's just four simple steps.
You want to be transparent.
That's an overall rule.
You want everybody to be confident about what they're doing.
If you follow all those steps, you'll have instant credibility.