Overcoming the Credibility / Relevance Gap
Online shopping always has an element of risk for most folks. For most goods or services online, there’s a level of faith you need to invest in a store before you punch in your credit card and click the “buy” button. There are lots of shady operators out there who have made purchasing online a bit of a gamble.
How does the client know that this is an actual store? Will the store will ship the goods? Is the payment system is secure? Are the goods are of solid quality and fairly priced? Will these people keep their word and deliver on time and in good faith?
Ambiguous answers to any of those questions will result in the potential client bouncing and going someplace where they feel they can safely spend their hard-earned dollars. Good eCommerce design should always attempt to allay these concerns.
To that end, there are two questions that a potential buyer needs from a website when they arrive and consider shopping there: Is the site relevant to what I need? Does the store look credible?
Is the site relevant to what I need?
The first thing that will go through the potential client’s mind is: Will I be able to find what I’m looking for here? Regardless of whether you’re getting folks coming from direct links, search engines (aka organic traffic) or through advertising (Paid traffic), the user doesn’t want to have their time wasted on a site that might not have the thing they’re looking for. Fortunately, there are some solid best practices to follow to answer that question:
Curate your goods:
Running a “general store” is a very seductive tactic with applications like Oberlo making simple to add thousands of products to your store. Unfortunately, if you make it difficult to find a specific item on your store, that sale is as good as lost.
Keep your choices of what to offer to a minimum and what you do have should be clearly organized.
Keep navigation simple:
There are a few apps out there that will let you have nested categories under larger categories. With a few exceptions, you really don’t need that. Simple, single hierarchy, navigation is ideal for most (but not all) stores. If you’re designing your own store theme, Consider looking into a UI Kit for your store and make your site consistent and clear to navigate to the products.
Remember the old adage: If a user needs to click more than 3 times to get to a product, you’ve lost the sale.
Invest in clear photos of your products:
Clear photos that can illustrate how they look will sell your products better than any extensive advertising copy. Either hire a photographer or if you want to do it yourself, check out our guide on the subject!
Understand your market:
Narrow down who your market is and design the content for them specifically. If you’re selling electronics, and you’ve got a brand that looks like children’s toys, you might send confusing information to the user. The very last thing you want someone to think when they click through to your site is “Am I in the right place?”
Is the site credible?
Credibility is another thing you need to convey when designing a site. A credible site will give shoppers the peace of mind and sense of security when going to check out and will help with conversion rates. To that end…
Is there a clear return policy?
A clearly stated return policy (even if it’s “no returns” with a clear indication as to why ) often helps develop the sense of professionalism of a store. People who can see a clear route to return an item should they be unhappy with it are much more likely to feel at ease making that purchase.
Are there product reviews?
Product reviews, using things like the free Shopify Review App, can really convey to the end-user that your site is credible. If you’ve got people posting their experiences with your products it really helps convey the fact that your store is the real deal.
And, if you ever get negative reviews, you can use that as an opportunity to display how professional you are. Everyone knows you can’t please everyone 100% of the time, so a clear, direct response to negative reviews is as powerful as a positive review itself.
Is there a clear way to contact the merchant if things go pear-shaped?
You don’t want to leave a user hanging should the product arrive broken, or get lost in transit. Giving a clear way to contact you, be it email, phone or a chat system like Facebook Messenger or something like What’s Help means that the user can followup on something goes wrong.
How “professional” does the site look?
Nobody is expecting every page to look like you spent $20k on the design, but the more clean, straight forward, and less gimicky your site is the more comfortable people are when it comes to making a purchase. Many of the Themes on Shopify can help with that, and quite a few of the “premium” themes can make design a snap.
Is there an “About Us” page that tells me a brief and interesting brand story?
Your “About Us” page is something that is often overlooked as far as a tool to convey your credibility. Building up that page, to include a clear narrative about who you are and why you’re passionate about your business really can tell the story about how committed you are to service and what to expect from you when someone makes a purchase from you.
We just wrote a really great article on the power of About Us Pages that I think should be mandatory reading for any new user.
The TL;DR:
The groundwork of building your credibility and your relevance is mostly labour you need to do on the onset of your store design. Stick to best practices, avoid cutting corners, and skip the really gimmicky add-ons for your store and you’ll find that the initial work you do pays off in dividends in the future.
