Trust is a key value in every human relationship. Brands now hold the same standard, with 81% of consumers needing to trust a brand to even consider making a purchase.
Good business is now all about the relationship, and brands are responsible for nurturing this relationship to build trust with their customers.
Why Brand Trust is Important
For more than half of all industries, the average customer retention rate is below 50%. With so many options for consumers to choose from, your brand needs to go above and beyond to build a loyal base of customers.
Trust is the backbone of loyalty, and it doesn’t happen overnight. People want to feel connected to a brand, and they crave a good experience when building that relationship. From packaging to customer service, everything needs to be optimized with customer satisfaction in mind.
Bonus Material: 15 Ways to Boost Engagement and Acquisition
How to Build Trust With Your Customers
The quality and price of a product is still a large factor in brand trust. However, how customers are treated plays a huge role in brand loyalty. Brands now have personalities, values and opinions. Your brand identity needs to relate with your target audience to create a solid foundation of trust.
If you’re not going above and beyond to build strong relationships, there’s a good chance you’ll be left with unhappy customers and lose them forever.
Here are the steps you need to build brand trust and solidify a positive image with your customers.
Provide a Seamless Customer Experience
The experience you provide on your website is key to increasing conversions and customer lifetime value. Customers are willing to pay an average of 16% more when they receive a better customer experience.
Starting with navigation, be sure your website is mobile friendly and maintains fast load times. If you offer a variety of products, make them searchable and enable filtering with categories. Many shoppers will visit your site with a specific item in mind, so don’t make it difficult to get there.
Your customer journey should also be unique and personal. A third of consumers will leave a brand that fails to create a sense of personalization.
Consider implementing strategies that heighten your on-site experience to improve customer satisfaction. Offer to save shoppers’ carts for later and follow with one-to-one emails. Suggest dynamic product recommendations relevant to specific browsing history. If an item is out of stock, present similar items to consider.
Personalized strategies will help shoppers feel seen instead of using a generic approach with every potential customer.
Be Available
You need to be available when your customers need you. 13% of consumers expect brands to respond on social media within the first hour of reaching out. 76% expect a response in the first 24 hours.
Although customer service has changed over the years, the same rules apply. If you’re not readily available shoppers will lose patience. 30% of consumers will go to a competitor instead of waiting for their desired brand to respond.
Provide a FAQs section, chatbot, email and phone number on your website, and check your messages on social media frequently.
Highlight Trustworthiness
55% of brand first impressions are visual. Provide Social proof in the form of reviews to help shoppers feel safe with your brand. Let customers upload photos in their reviews so products can be seen from a new perspective.
You can also provide social proof by calling attention to inventory or recent views. Highlight popular items to help influence purchasing decisions. Once customers head to the cart and checkout pages, use trust badges to remove any doubts before asking for credit card information.
Maintain Key Characteristics
Every brand will have a different identity depending on your industry and target audience. However, there are two key characteristics every brand needs to successfully build customer trust.
Transparency
In a survey of 2,000 customers, 94% reported they will be loyal to a transparent brand. 39% of the same group said they’d change brands in pursuit of brand transparency.
If there’s something you’re hiding, such as negative reviews, your audience will likely still find out. In the long run, this makes a bad situation worse. Implement customer satisfaction surveys to get the feedback you need.
Accepting and implementing customer feedback boosts loyalty in 77% of customers. Be open and honest when building relationships so your customers trust your promises.
Consistency
If you make promises, be sure to keep them. A consistent brand image increases revenue by up to 23%. You need consistency with product quality as well as with your content and messaging.
Maintain delivery windows on time. Produce high-quality products and packaging. Post on various platforms at least once a week. Respond to customers quickly with all the information they need. Send out updates and new offers on a frequent basis.
Make your image reliable so you can live up to customer expectations. It takes five to seven brand impressions for someone to remember a brand. If you’re consistent every time, you’re on your way to gaining a lifelong customer.
Maintaining the Relationship
Once you’ve established a solid relationship, the effort doesn’t stop there. Happy customers build loyal customers. Like any real relationship, you need to nurture your customers, learn their needs, and let them know their business is important to you.
Lifecycle emails are a great strategy to keep your customers in the loop so your brand stays top of mind. Send updates and inside offers to maintain excitement about your products or services. Encourage newsletter sign ups to build your audience and maintain open lines of communication.
People talk, and word of mouth is also one of the most popular ways to gain new customers – or lose them. If people trust in your brand, they’ll tell their friends and family which can help expand your customer base even more.
Building Trust with Conversion Optimization
Brand trust leads to increased revenue and a secure brand image. Relationship building never stops, but a streamlined online experience is a simple solution to maintain trust with your customers.
UpSellit’s conversion optimization solutions enhance the customer experience and provide a personalized buyer’s journey so your shoppers stay on track and continue to make repeat purchases.
Reach out to us at hello@upsellit.com, or get a free copy of UpSellit’s 15 Ways to Boost Engagement and Acquisition so you can implement more ways to build relationships that lead to conversions.
