5 Easy Ways to Build Trust In Your Drop Shipping Store
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How can you build trust in your drop shipping store? Read on to discover the quick wins that can help you see real results.
Dropshipping is an increasingly popular ecommerce model, and for good reason. As a seller, this particular means of online selling has a strong reputation for being low risk. You don’t hold any stock, there’s no need for upfront investment in products, and you only pay for items that you sell.
But while it can feel like a risk-free venture for the ambitious ecommerce entrepreneur, this sense of security doesn’t always translate into customer experience. The dropshipping model revolves around goods bypassing the retailer and being delivered directly to the consumer. Without careful vetting of suppliers, this perceived absence of quality control can permit scepticism to creep in. Luckily, platforms like Oberlo exist to make this process seamless, meaning anyone with internet access can now build a profitable business in 2021.
Additionally, dropshipping gives retailers the ability to rapidly respond to emerging trends. Great news for sellers, but this can often mean that stores are younger and less well established. 92% of consumers have concerns about providing personal information (such as credit card details) when shopping at websites they have not made purchases from in the past. This jumps to a hugely significant 95% when shopping at websites they have not heard of before.
How to Build Trust in Your Dropshipping Store
But, all is not lost. There are several ways that you can proactively build trust in your dropshipping store, and many of these measures are fast and free to implement.
As a retailer, you’ll see a return on your investment here. A more trustworthy site leads to more confident customers. And more confident customers mean more sales across the line. Read on to discover how you can boost trust in your dropshipping store, starting today.
Add a FAQ Page
This is an excellent first step towards building trust in your store. Your customers will be reassured to see that time has been taken to provide answers to questions that other customers commonly have.
Not only does this confirm the presence of a caring and attentive store owner, it also suggests an engaged and interested customer base. FAQ pages are a common feature of ecommerce stores, so seeing one definitely boosts the initial impression you make with regard to the legitimacy of your business.
Beyond being reassuring in their own right, an FAQ page can also help to answer some of the questions that might be blocking a customer from making a purchase. Be sure to focus on the common areas of doubt that consumers experience when it comes to dropshipping stores. Provide reassuring information about the quality of your products, the experience of the supplier, the ability to return items and the expected speed of your shipping.
Include clear policy pages
In addition to a FAQ page, we’d highly recommend ensuring that all of your store’s key policies have their own dedicated page. This should cover your privacy policy, your returns policy and your shipping policy. In addition to the SEO benefits to be gained, setting out each policy on its own clear page will give your visitors easily accessible access to the detailed information they might require.
Of the three pages, your privacy page will be one of the most important. 88% of people admit to having concerns about the security of their personal information online, and as ecommerce retailers, we are asking our customers to hand over some of their most personal, valuable data.
A clear privacy policy can do more than simply keep your store compliant with regulation. By working with a privacy solution such as Enzuzo, you can empower your customer to take active control of their data – showing them that you care about, and have taken steps to protect – their rights to privacy.
Add trust badges
Trust badges perform a vital role when it comes to customers’ faith in a store. They’re a fantastic visual shorthand for giving reassurance that steps have been taken to ensure top notch security and service.
All ecommerce stores should display SSL certificates (these are activated by default for your Shopify store's checkout, and for any content that's hosted on a .myshopify.com domain).
In addition to this, there are a few other categories of site badge that you might like to consider. Some relate to general site security (giving an additional reassurance that personal information is secure), guarantee or money back trust seals, secure payments icons (for example, showing that payments are processed by Stripe or Paypal) or industry awards badges.
Even displaying the logos of the payment types you accept (Visa, Mastercard, or Amex etc) can help lend you a little of the prestige that these trusted brands inspire.
Include social proof
Ultimately, we’re social animals, hardwired to follow the pack. When it comes to inspiring confidence in a new store or brand, no one is more persuasive that our peers. In fact, 92% of consumers are more inclined to trust non-paid recommendations than any other type of advertising.
It’s because of this that you’ll want to leverage the power of social proof across your dropshipping store. What do we mean by social proof? Any content generated by the actions of other shoppers which supports the idea that they’re happily buying from you – paving the way for others to follow.
Reviews are the most commonly used example of social proof within ecommerce. 70% of shoppers will trust a recommendation made by someone they don’t even know, and The average consumer reads 10 reviews online before deciding to make a purchase. Integrating reviews into your dropshipping store and associated marketing can be a very effective way of building trust – even negative reviews help to give the impression of honesty and transparency.
Write detailed products descriptions
When it comes to ecommerce, we ask a lot of our customers. There’s really no other comparable situation in which we’d expect people to give over their money and highly sensitive information in exchange for goods which they can see, touch or test before purchase.
Dropshipping adds an extra level of expectation into the mix. Due to the nature of the model, you might be asking your customers to accept a longer delivery time, and all of this can amount to a greater sense of risk.
Not only do they have the capacity to enhance your SEO (higher search rankings always help boost trust!) product descriptions can also go a long way toward helping soothe fears about the goods that will eventually be received. Taking time to craft fully descriptive and individual write ups for each of your products shows a thorough knowledge of your stock. It’s a great way to differentiate yourself from the competition, who will commonly just copy and paste product specifications from their supplier.
Ready To Build Trust In Your Dropshipping Store?
Dropshipping offers so much exciting potential to the world of ecommerce, and with a little time and effort, has the chance to prove extremely successful for those willing to pay to the finer detail and customer experience.
Trust has a huge role to play in the ultimate success of your dropshipping store, so don’t leave things to chance. The five steps outlined in this article should get you thinking along the right lines, and offer plenty of scope for taking action that can lead to rapid improvements.
For a significant and swiftly implemented boost to your customer trust, launch an interactive and engaging privacy policy on your website in just 10 minutes with Enzuzo.
Cat Hunter