Trust Enabling Strategies - Web-store Assessment

The Essential Christmas Web-store Makeover (download article in PDF / text)

Do you know why the vast majority of your prospective customers are rejecting your online offers?

The answer is so simple and obvious - yet until now no-one has addressed it explicitly as a critical success factor. (You will find the answer below)

Let's take a quick look at your web site investments so far. Think about what percentage of your web site sales and marketing budget you have invested in each of the following initiatives:

Short Name	Type of Investment	% of Budget
CRA	Customer Research and Analysis	%
DD	Design & Development	%
SEO	Search Engine Optimization	%
CMC	Content Management and/or Customization	%
U	Usability	%
TC	Traffic Conversion	%
A	Advertising	%
DM	Direct Marketing	%
PR	Public Relations	%
CRM	Customer Relationship Management (CRM)	%
LP	Loyalty Programs	%
O	Other	%
Total		100%

Now for the answer to our question:

The vast majority of your customers are not accepting your online offers because you have not successfully convinced them that you deliver sufficient value.

If this is so obvious, then which of the above web site marketing and sales investments have explicitly addressed your customers' trust and confidence needs?

Let's see if we can identify trust and confidence building strategies that you typically might expect to have explicitly addressed by each of the above sales and marketing initiatives. We will use the "Ten great tips to turn online holiday shoppers into eager buyers - and satisfied customers" from our recent article "The Essential Web-store Makeover" (click here to read article) as the basis for our assessment:

Typical Web Sales & Marketing Initiatives

Ten Great Tips for Building Confidence Online

CRA

SEO

CMC

CRM

Put on your best web suit

Put your best logo forward

Proudly wear your credentials

Pass out your virtual business card

Don't be a Grinch

Insure - and assure - customers

Deal with privacy matters

Be transparent

Hold the customer's hand

10.

Offer a personal touch

So who can you rely on to help you build trust with your online customers, strategically?

In other words, who on your team has the complete picture of what it takes to establish and maintain required levels of customer confidence throughout the entire transaction process - discovery, negotiate & order, fulfillment and settlement & compliance?

If you have this resource or believe it is adequately addressed by your team then ask them to answer the following questions:

How do we build trust online quickly?
What level of trust do we need to get customers engaged?
How do we get a customer to buy when they do not trust us sufficiently?
How do we build higher levels of trust?
How do we protect from a loss of trust throughout a customer transaction?
What processes are in place to ensure we maintain optimal levels of trust?
How do we attain and maintain the levels of trust required to secure long-term customer commitments?

Good answers to these questions are critical if you hope to improve traffic conversion rates AND increase revenue per customer.

At this point, you may be thinking:

"Wow - I get it! You mean we can explicitly design our web site to achieve specific trust and confidence objectives."

"Of course. This is so obvious. Why hasn't anyone else thought of this before?"

"I always thought trust was intangible and amorphous - more a feeling or emotion - something that belongs to social science, not business processes."

"Designing for trust - this is a powerful idea. Imagine the possibilities."

"Think about it - who wouldn't value more trust?"

"If this is truly possible, then one would have to be a fool not to liberally apply confidence-building principles to their web site."

Final word.

Trust is not the only thing you need to run a successful business online, but it is the critical ingredient that allows your customers to give you more of their business, sooner.

Oh, and one more thing - think about how your online customers might feel.