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.

(By the way, if you are not comfortable with the answers you receive, start asking questions in our discussion forum. Better still, get your web team involved in the discussion online.)

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."

If you share our sentiments on the critical role customer trust and confidence play in the success of your and your colleagues' online businesses, take a moment to find out what you can do about it NOW:

"I want to think about the implications for a while" - in which case, feel free to browse this prerelease version of our web site, but first please register your vote in our 3 question poll in the right column of this page. Also, click HERE to have us inform you when we post information that is of specific interest to you or when Phase I of our site is completed. Thank you for reading our article and visiting our site;
"I want to actively explore how Trust Enablement™ may be relevant to my e-business" - I suggest you begin by asking us to search our 250 MB library of more than 1,800 fully indexed and categorized documents on trust for the specific information that you need. Also, post some questions in our discussion forum - you might get some very insightful answers to your questions. One more thing, why don't you send and e-mail to Dear Trust Enabler: a) explain your online trust or confidence issue; b) the impact it is having on your business; c) the implications of not being able to resolve it adequately; d) what you are currently or are planning to do about it; and e) what the implications to your business would be if you could resolve the issue. The Trust Enabler will respond within 48 hours with his assessment and high level recommendations - for free - no obligations;
"I am really excited about the potential of Trust Enabling™ online businesses and want to see what my colleagues think about the opportunity" - Why don't you invite them to visit our web site? Here is some text you can copy and paste into your e-mail message to save you time <I just discovered a novel, new approach to building business value at www.TrustEnablement.com. It is a new resource center dedicated to addressing business trust and confidence issues - and specifically e-commerce applications - that features both a library and discussion forums. Let me know what you think. I have posted a message in their discussion forum and would welcome your comments.>. Also, sign up for Trust Enablement News, our free e-newsletter about business confidence, which always includes a section on online trust. The next issue will go into more detail on specific tips from our article "The Essential Web-store Makeover" (click here to access the article);
"I am ready to try applying Trust Enablement™ principles, before making a commitment either way." - Great! You might qualify for a FREE Comparative Trust Enablement Assessment of Web Sites. We only do a few of these per week, so send me, Alex Todd, an e-mail describing your online trust or confidence issue and your web site's URL as well as those of up to 2 other sites that you would like compared. If you qualify, you will receive a report that looks similar to this example. Alternatively, send me an e-mail to schedule a free half hour telephone consultation.

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.