The holiday shopping season is upon us, and online retailers are busy implementing new shopping features and social campaigns, analyzing their test results, and redesigning their funnels from browsing to checkout.
But you shouldn’t waste your precious and ever-dwindling time focusing solely on usability and user-interface improvements. Bottom line: If you don’t have your visitors’ trust and confidence, you won’t convert them into customers, regardless of all the improvements that your testing results indicated you should make.
So make it a priority—not just during the holiday season but year-round—to provide shoppers with the sense of safety and security they long for in their shopping experience. Use our tips below to ensure that visitors spend their precious time deciding which product to buy from your site, rather than if they should even buy from your site at all.
1) Put your contact information in a prominent place. Consistently display both your phone number and your email address within your header and footer so that visitors can contact you in the manner of their choosing when they have questions.
2) Include links to your privacy policy on all transactional pages. The ubiquitous footer link is a good place to start, but it’s too often overlooked down there. On transactional pages, make sure you have it prominently called out in the body of the page, above the fold. In addition, spell out pieces of your policy as needed. For example, when asking for an email address, state your email usage policy right next to the field.
3) Don’t hide costs. Transparency in shipping costs and delivery times is key, especially come holiday season. Be sure to provide all the actual costs up front, including shipping, handling, and sales tax. These can have an enormous impact on the final price. According to OneUpWeb, 95% of customers want to know the exact cost of the order before proceeding into checkout. There is no better way to put the kibosh on a potential sale than to withhold additional costs until later in funnel.
When the user can expect to receive his package is also enormously important, especially to shoppers cutting it close during the holiday season. Show this information as early as possible as well. Shoppers are willing to pay a premium as long as you can provide them with the security that their order will arrive on time, as promised.
4) Don’t make shoppers hunt for your return policy and guarantee. Shoppers want to know what their recourse is if their item arrives and is damaged, the wrong item, or simply not what they wanted. Be sure to clearly spell out your return policy so that there won’t be any surprises later. Do you have a shopper satisfaction guarantee? Nice! Again, place this prominently above the fold, and inspire your shoppers with confidence that they can’t make a wrong or irreversible decision.
5) Anticipate their concerns. Be mindful of sensitive touch points throughout the purchasing process. Address concerns before they even arise. If you expect your customers to share private and personal information with you, tell them why you need the information at the appropriate times:
• A “We 100% guarantee your safety” link right next to the checkout button and in a checkout header that leads to a DHTML (dynamic HTML) pop-up with your 100% satisfaction guarantee inspires confidence and keeps the user in the funnel.
• As mentioned earlier, including a note along the lines of “We will not share your email with anyone” next to email field lets users know you aren’t going to sell their email address.
• Providing shipping details on the product pages, in the shopping cart, and during checkout makes users aware of costs and availability early and often.
• “You can always change your order later” when tied to a call to action removes some of the hesitation associated with doubts on whether to commit at that exact moment.
• Including “Prefer to checkout over the phone? No problem. Call us at…” at the top of your checkout gives shoppers a sense of security even if they don’t plan on calling you.
6) Apply the human touch. Ten other sites may sell the same product, at the same discounted price, and have the same safety features in place. Differentiate yourself by emphasizing a personal touch and telling your shoppers that you completely understand their concerns. Give them that warm and fuzzy feeling that they are in good hands by hitting the emotional aspects of shopping.
Using the right tone and personality makes a difference. It is comforting for a customer to see “Please don’t hesitate to call us with any concerns or questions. Your security is our sole priority” rather than a simple link to an FAQ section. Instill confidence in your customers by speaking to them like human beings, rather than “unique visitors,” throughout the shopping process.
7) Make the most of your “about us” page and your value proposition. The “about” page is an often-overlooked part of creating a secure shopping experience. Is yours a family-owned business? Are you quirky? Are you a huge company that started off with two people in a garage? Do you donate a certain portion of profits to charity? Don’t let “about us” be one paragraph of fluff about commitment to selling great products. Shoppers will see right through this. Be yourself. Shoppers have a greater sense of confidence knowing that they are at a real store run by real people.
8) Make a good first impression. Shoppers will form an opinion of your company within five seconds of seeing your home page. Want them to feel safe and not think you are a fly-by-night outfit? Invest in design. Your site doesn’t need to be an award-winning, gorgeous visual experience. The design simply needs to give an instant sense of credibility and trustworthiness. Even though customers may not be entirely conscious of it, good design inspires confidence.
9) Ensure that your site is stable and loads quickly. A slowly loading page, a site that’s down, or obscure programming error messages can raise instant doubts in shoppers’ minds. Site visitors are often in comparison-shopping mode, so if they were to leave one site only to arrive at another that loads slowly, or not at all, they will quickly head back to the previous site or jump ahead to another one. If they see errors and messages they don’t recognize, they will doubt your professionalism and whether their information is safe on your site. A solid technical implementation is as important as a great design.
10) Show off your certification. Seals of approval from TRUSTe or Better Business Bureau Online are widely recognized. But a seal is only a graphic; it can be counterfeited. So make sure you link to the certifying agency's site, which should profile your merchant information. Also, avoid the Times Square approach of putting eight different seals on your site. It diminishes the effectiveness. If you really feel the need to bombard shoppers with eight seals, all I ask is that you use the animated graphics. At least then your savvy visitors can get a laugh.
11) Sweat the small stuff. Be sure your site has been thoroughly reviewed and that there are no misspellings or grammatical mistakes. They may seem tiny, but they will immediately cast your professionalism in doubt.
12) Highlight security via social validation. Social validation is a proven factor in influencing how people purchase products, and it’s no different when it comes to influencing why they should shop at your site for these products. Customer dialogue, reviews, and interactions (regardless of what is being discussed) bring instant credibility to your site. People want to know that other people shop at your store. They want to see activity and not just take your word for it.
As online retailers, it is our responsibility to provide a safe and comfortable shopping environment for the customer, both online or off. The most successful businesses are able to instill confidence in their customers while adding a human touch. They develop a trusting, ongoing relationship with their customers to ensure repeat purchases and loyalty. So do your customers and your bottom line a favor by letting them focus on giving rather than worrying.
Josh Levine is cofounder/CEO of Web design firm Alexander Interactive.
