When consumers have confidence in their online purchases – confidence that they are getting what they have paid for, confidence that their data is being handled securely – they are happy to keep spending. With traditional retail the trust gap was much smaller, consumers could examine a product before they purchased and the retailer had a physical premises where consumers could return should they need to. The Internet changed this and now consumers have to take a leap of faith and face a much wider trust gap and the challenge for both consumers and marketplaces is how to narrow the trust gap and keep consumers buying.
Marketplaces have addressed this with eBay adding feedback, detailed seller ratings, PowerSeller rankings, Top Rated Seller status and more lately premium service. Amazon have their A to Z Guarantee and consumers know that if things go wrong they will put it right. But how does a retailer convince a consumer to buy their product in the first place and, perhaps more importantly, trust their supply chain to know that the products they are selling are safe and robust in order to protect their own reputation?
“Trust But Verify”: Bridging the Trust Gap in Ecommerce Whitepaper
In our new whitepaper, Trust But Verify: Bridging the Trust Gap in Ecommerce, we partnered with SGS to examine the trust gap in ecommerce and examine steps retailers can take to make their products more attractive to consumers and ensure that their reputation is upheld.
Covering three main area – The Product, The Process and The Presentation, it becomes clear that buyers don’t want to do the vetting themselves. They want clear and accessible information and they want to know that they are getting what they pay for. If the seller can’t deliver this, there will always be other choices for the consumer – this is the internet after all.
The challenge and the opportunity, then, for sellers and marketplaces sitting in the middle of customers and manufactures is to become a trusted middleman, handling the trickiest aspects of assurance and keeping the customer informed about what they find out.
At the end of the whitepaper you’ll find six best practices to start building trust today with links to helpful resources. While some aspects of trust will always be beyond your control, it is important to grasp the nettle where you can and not only stay ahead of the competition but reap the further benefits of increased sales.
You can download the whitepaper here.
