The importance of images in building customer trust in eCommerce
A product’s quality, price, and shipping costs are determining factors in triggering a customer’s impulse to make a purchase, but, if they have second thoughts at the last minute, they won’t go through with the payment process. The key to turning that momentum into a completed action is trust.
An online store should present their future customers with guarantees, like users’ opinions; the online Trust Stamp, which only 23% of Spanish e-commerce stores use; or a good product page with all the details so the customer arrives confidently at checkout.
But if an e-commerce still has cart abandonments even after it meets all these factors, where is it failing? There are thousands of reasons that can cause a customer to backtrack; to avoid this, all you have to do is offer a real time customer service option: a livechat. How quickly an agent solves a customer’s problems certainly influences whether the client decides to finish the purchase or not. However, attending the visitor well and finding a quick solution isn’t easy because a chat presents an important communication barrier: it’s not visual.
If a customer asks how long a shipment will take or how they can return a product, replying through livechat is useful, quick, and convenient. But if they have concerns about what product is best or questions like, “How can I find the item I need?”, or worse, “How do I know if the cable I’m looking at is compatible with my device’s input jack?” the story gets more complicated.
The user is forced to explain and repeat what he needs several times. When the agent manages to understand, he will start sending links with different suggestions, which will take the customer from one browser tab to another to view the products. Both parties will still be speaking with each other but the conversation can become very confusing.
Let’s recap: If a customer has doubts before completing the purchase, they’ll need a quick solution. Since consulting customer service can get crazy, they won’t feel confident enough to complete the purchase. Buying from an online store has many benefits: it’s comfortable, fast, and easy. But, if it can’t provide a substitute for these virtual products and customers can’t verify that their purchase is like what they see on the web; that’s a bad omen.
The power of pictures
Images are responsible for convincing a customer, and successful images get the person to click and finalize the purchase. A good picture allows the customer to have an idea if the product will adapt to their needs and if it will meet their expectations.
For example, if the product page doesn’t contain detailed images of a sweater’s fabric so we can see the quality, how do we know if it’ll keep us warm or not? Or, to know the actual size of a couch because we can’t really tell from the picture. Is it spacious? With questions like these, the customer won’t have a clear idea of the product they want to buy. A good picture is a guarantee.
When a client has the chance to ask an agent their question, there’s also the chance that you won’t lose that sale since the agent can suggest other options. Additionally, if the agent can show images of the products in real time and show the customer some of their features while both parties are looking, any hesitation about the product will disappear completely.
So far, Oct8ne is the only software that enables this type of customer service and experience. This Sales Suite works like a livechat but includes, among other features, a drop-down menu panel where you can view and share images simultaneously using various devices. Furthermore, the customer and the agent can look at products together while resolving doubts or scrolling through other options.
According to a study done by this company, the intent to make a purchase multiplies when online stores show their customers different products using the coviewer. This way, the client doesn’t have to go back and forth to different tabs. For each image shared, the customer is more and more convinced to make the purchase they were going to, given that they can see the products more clearly.
Consumers remember 80% of what they see and only 20% of what they read. As such, steering customer service to model sales assistance increases revenue by at least 10%. When an agent attends a customer through a chat only, the conversion is 4.5% but if the customer service is visual, the sales increase to 15–20%.
The results are logical. If a customer needs a product and has an agent available to answer any questions and accompany them throughout the entire purchasing process, they’re more apt to receive the product they were looking for and have it be the same as what they saw on the web.
Benefits of Oct8ne
Our software allows you to share images and videos of any product in the store, even those that aren’t uploaded to the database. This will ensure that the customer has an accurate idea of what they will receive after making the payment.
Thanks to the livechat tool, not only will you have more finalized purchases, you’ll also be able to avoid cart abandonment, returns, complaints, and poor customer reviews.
Oct8ne’s coviewer doesn’t force the user to install any applications in order to use it. Furthermore, it allows both parties to send images in real time, upload them to the chat from their own device, take photos via webcam, or send pictures from their smart phone.
About the author:
This article was written by Beatriz Rojo, a digital journalist discovered by the world of e-commerce. She is currently responsible for content and Social Media at Oct8ne.
