How do e-commerce sites generate trust?

Grant Leboff: Graham, we are told that people only do business with people who they trust. That’s okay when it’s off-line. When it’s bricks and mortar and you can see the store and that you have been there before. But when you start going online – and often we will only visit sites only once or twice which will buy from – what are the techniques that companies can use to try and win some of that trust in an online environment?

Graham Jones: Generating trust online is really important, because if people don’t trust you in an instant, they will click away to find a site that seems more trustworthy. So the measures that people are making of whether or not to trust a site are; how much knowledge is that sites transmitting, do they appear to know their stuff, are they experts, do they really understand their subject? All this gives people confidence so that they can trust this company. So those are some of the things that you need to demonstrate, fairly quickly, on your site; that you really do know your stuff.

Grant Leboff: How do you do that and, at the same time, make it visually easy? Of course you can have lots of text with lots of things, and that would show that you know your stuff, but it would also make it impossible to navigate and people would click off anyway. So how do you square the circle and make it easy to use and visually appealing, while still managing to make sure that you are demonstrating that you know what you’re talking about?

Graham Jones: You need to have some clear visual signals so, depending on your design, you need visual signals to things that demonstrate that you know your stuff. Things like visual signals to your video channel, visual signals to your blog (showing that you are producing content) not about you as a business but, about the subject of the topic you are trying to sell. Having all of this helps people establish that you know your stuff.

The other things are, like, badges. Badges to professional bodies, badges to trade associations that help demonstrate that you are really connected to the world that represents your kind of business. So those are the kind of quick visual hits, plus a phone number on every single page that says to people you are happy to be spoken to, you live in the real world and you’re not some kind of a virtual business that doesn’t want to be contacted. Do all of those things, those quick visual hits, with a big phone number and so on, can really help people begin to trust you.

Grant Leboff: So these are some of the things companies should be employing and, of course, the biggest influence on human behaviour has always been social proof. How important is that on the eliciting trust as well and, how do companies demonstrate that online?

Graham Jones: They can demonstrate social proof by having tweets and stuff that other people have said. But really, the best thing is for that social proof to live on its own, to live on its own on Facebook. For you just to say; here, if you want to find out what people say about us, just visit our Facebook page and ask them. In other words, show that you are prepared to put your trust in other people rather then you pre-selecting it. We all know that the kind of testimonials you see on a website are chosen by the site, they are not going to put the kind of testimonials that say your products are rubbish and your services is awful. We know that it is completely biased. What we need to do is to allow people to see the independent stuff and to have a link through to that is really quite important.

Grant Leboff: So how important do you think a social media platform is in the success of an e-commerce site, when you think that they are in the environment where people can double check and ask, and how do the two get linked together?

Graham Jones: Well you need to manage all that. One thing is you need to be aware of it, you need to see what’s going on, you need to, maybe, comment on some of those things, to be involved. You need to engage with that social activity, so ignoring it is something you can’t do, you have got to get involved. You also need to point people towards those independent things, point people to groups on Facebook that have been set up to discuss your topic. They may mention your company. In other words, you are saying that you are so confident in your products that you are happy to point people to anything where people are talking about them

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