Effective Ways to Build Trust Online for Your Business

It’s scary how quickly a customer can search for your brand name and evaluate your trustworthiness for themselves in a matter minutes. It doesn’t matter how compelling your call-to-actions are, how fast your pages load on your website, or the quality of your content, a potential customer can take one look, bounce out, and never look back.

Luckily there are ways to ensure that you have your best face forward when capturing new customers, communicating to them that you’ve got their best interests in mind for the long haul.

When it comes to marketing and sales, guards go up, not only because there are so many choices, but with those choices come high-pressure, exploitative, direct tactics. When building your brand, it’s crucial to gain the trust of your prospective customers, while keeping the trust of your current customers. While honesty is the best policy, it’s just one component of building trust for your business.

Here are several simple ways your brand can begin to build online trust with new and existing customers.

1. Be Transparent

It’s getting harder and harder to communicate your selling points when everyone’s the go and skimming through your web copy. Nothing is quite as frustrating is liking a product going through the check out process only to find that there’s some fine print about a offer limitations or an extra monthly fee.

Be sure to be clear about your offerings, how it works, cancellations and returns. All of this information should be clear and easy to find and should not catch a brand new customer off guard. Bad surprises are the quickest to lost credibility!

2. Add Testimonials

Potential customers want to know that you’ve worked with other customers. Of course, everyone knows that you aren’t going to post bad reviews on your own website, but if there are satisfied customers that are well respected and well known people in your industry and community, it can provide an extra boost of credibility for your brand.

3. Incorporate Videos

A very effective way to give your customers a reason to trust you and get to know you at the same time is introducing yourself through video. Recorded or live video is amazing at communicating your expertise and answering common questions. Video gives you a chance to showcase your personality and knowledge, while giving potential customers an opportunity to “meet” you before they call.

4. Post Credentials

Are you a member of any industry, professional, or local community organizations? Does your business require you to be certified, licensed, or insured? Simply displaying your affiliations and credentials help assure your client or customer that you’re regulated and you can be trusted.

5. Build Customer Reviews

Review sites are often the first place customers look when they hear about a new product or service. While you may not have a control over what customers post about your business, there are proactive ways to protect and monitor your online reputation. Getting involved in building and optimizing your brand’s review sites and asking for customer feedback ahead of time are ways to boost trust for your organization while providing outstanding customer service.

Automated emails is a simple to streamline your sales process; just don’t forget to personalize them! Adding personalization to email drip campaigns can ensure that you’re building a quality relationship with your potential or current customers. While spamming is never recommended, providing relevant content that would be useful to a customer is a great way to let them learn more about your brand and being top of mind when that customer is ready to buy.

7. Resolve Issue Immediately

There will be a time when your customer has a question or concern. If your customers or clients have an issue with your product or service, don’t wait to address and resolve it. If someone makes a purchase, has questions or concerns, but can’t find a way to get in touch and get an answer, it can mean the HOV lane to “untrustworthy” for your brand. Make sure your team receives notifications for all website forms and chat features so that questions are answered as soon as possible! Waiting a few days to respond to an email inquiry can mean losing a potential customer’s trust for good.