Does your store inspire trust? Check out this trust checklist for online stores and find out what adjustments you can make to improve your credibility.
What customers care about when shopping online; based on research from Shopify
On this page
What makes an online store reliable?
How to gain customer trust on your website
Customers reward companies they trust
Frequently asked questions about the trust checklist for an online store
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Customer trust is the foundation of any successful business and the driving force behind every sale. In a world where consumers have endless options at the click of a button, business owners can track many metrics, but the most important one – trust – remains difficult to measure accurately.
How can you build trust with shoppers when they canada phone numbers visit your online store for the first time? What elements of the shopping experience can build trust or, on the contrary, break it?
A trust checklist for an online store is a key tool to identify the areas in which your company can improve and offer an experience that invites customers to trust and buy.
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What makes an online store reliable?
At Shopify, we’ve been doing a lot of research on this question. Last year, we interviewed a diverse group of North American shoppers, asking them to tell us about a recent purchase of a product or a store they’d never shopped at.
Additionally, we asked them to make an actual purchase of up to $40 from an unfamiliar Shopify store.
Our goal was to answer two key questions:
How is trust built for shoppers evaluating a new store or an unfamiliar product?
Which pages or elements of a store are essential to building customer trust?
By analyzing their actions and decisions during these purchases, we identified clear patterns that distinguish between the elements that generate trust and those that break it in online stores.
Trust-building elements are design and content details that reassure buyers, dispel doubts, and make them feel comfortable making a purchase.
On the contrary, those that undermine trust are those that arouse suspicion, making them question the legitimacy of the business and whether it is safe to buy from it.
Today we share these findings with you so you can make improvements to your online store, increasing its reliability and encouraging first-time buyers to complete their purchase.
We've also created a trust checklist for online stores that you can download and use while you're building your website or to fine-tune it once you've got it, ensuring you meet your customers' expectations and build their trust.
Download the trust checklist for online stores
How to gain customer trust on your website
Earning customer trust starts from the first moment they visit your site. Maintaining and strengthening that trust depends on the quality of the information you share and the social proof that backs up your claims.
Our findings revealed five essential elements to building and increasing customer trust in an online store, starting with a good first impression.