E-Commerce for All

Very often as we complete store reports and consult we find online stores that have made modifications and other development tasks which clearly inhibit the ability to gain the shoppers trust. You can pay thousands of dollars to develop an online store and get the very best SEO, but if your store does not enlist the shopper’s trust you are dead in the water.

Overall Internet users have become more sensitive and aware of the factors which are considered “trust” violations. Surfers are quite skilled in identifying a “bad site” and are reacting accordingly. No longer do droves of Internet users mindlessly click ads or provide personal information, those days are gone. We are in the dawn of a far more savvy Internet user.

Some mistakes we see are in fact very common and very out of date, others are just plain lack of foresight. Today we will cover some of the most common trust reducing metrics we have found in the stores we have analyzed. You may well know that we develop and optimize Zen Cart, so some factors will be directly related to the Zen Cart software, but most of these store trust issues are very common in other e-commerce platforms.

• If you are using a shared SSL or none at all, you are sending a message of distrust to your shoppers. Even full PayPal or other off site processing accounts should make use of a private SSL. Customers don’t even want to provide their email address without one. Honestly for the cost involved there is no valid reason not to use a proper secured protocol for your users.
• If you are using a private SSL, the battle does not stop there. Many times we visit a site and the secured pages include outside non-secure links or elements. Shoppers have no idea that these links or elements are generally just part of your template, and they don’t care either. They only know the lock is showing broken and they feel unprotected.
• Let shoppers know you have installed an SSL to protect their transaction and what to look for to assure it is working. This is really not necessary as most know already, but it sends the message that you personally have taken steps to protect them.
• Collect as little information as possible on checkout. Shoppers do not want to answer unrelated personal information questions. Questions of this nature only lead them to believe you are somehow hording and using their information for other means.
• Enhance your checkout with helpful tips and notes to let shoppers know where they are in the checkout process and that they are on track. This includes a clear shipping policy for rates and delivery. They should know their shipping choices in the very beginning of checkout, as sites like eBay and such have burned shoppers with inflated shipping charges and they are very wary if they do not know the shipping cost before the begin to checkout
• Send ALL customers a receipt from YOUR store’s domain email address and provide tracking or an update of shipment to EVERY customer without fail.