Optimism and enthusiasm overflowing, the day your ecommerce site went live was glorious. Even better, traffic ramped up pretty quickly. All those hours spent on SEO, SEM and social media paid off big time.

But—

Nobody’s buying anything.

Shoppers show up, poke around for a few seconds and leave. Your virtual shopping carts are gathering virtual dust.

What’s Up?

In most cases, it boils down to customer confidence. Read on to see if traits of your store can be found among the reasons people don’t trust a website.

Missing or Inadequate About Us Page :

People want to get a sense of with whom they are doing business. The About Us page is your opportunity to tell them your story, what made you decide to get into commerce, what things you consider important and most of all—who you are. People tend to distrust things they can’t see. Make yourself more visible. Post names and photos of yourself and your team, a solid email address, a physical address and a phone number. You’ll see the trust factor of your site improve.

Sketchy Privacy Policy :

Would you really disclose sensitive personal information to someone who won’t give you any idea what they will—or will not—do with it? Then why would you expect people you’ve never met to do the same thing? While most people don’t bother to read privacy policies, you still need to have a transparent one in place for those who do. All you need is for one of them to read yours, decide it’s bogus and spread the word all over social media. What’s the next sound you’ll hear? Yeah, those would be crickets.

Poor Quality Design and Content :

First impressions matter in ecommerce because all people have to go on is what they see. If it’s an amateurish design, populated with poor quality photography and content littered with grammatical, punctuation and spelling errors, they are going to bounce. What’s more, if your site design looks old, you’ll lose people too. Free website templates offered by companies like Shopify will give you an idea of what’s happening in ecommerce now. If your site looks old compared to those—well—get one of those.

Lack of an Extended Validation Trust Certificate :

That green padlock next to your domain name in the browser window—wait, your site doesn’t have one? That’s one of the key indicators a site has strong security protocols in place. People know to look for it now, as it means their personally identifiable information is at least kind of safe on that site. HTTP is no longer enough; you need HTTPS now.

No Peer Validation :

First-time visitors to an ecommerce site are looking for clues it’s OK to spend money there. One of the most reliable methods of imparting trust is posting testimonials from people who have done business with you and got what they paid for—or even better, more than they paid for. The reasoning goes, “They took the plunge and didn’t drown, it’s probably OK for me to jump in too.” A testimonial carries even more weight when a photograph of the person interacting with the product in question accompanies it.

The dearth of these five elements are among the most common reasons people don’t trust a website. If yours is missing them, that’s what’s killing your conversions. To get people to plunk down their plastic to move that product off your virtual shelves, you’ve got to give them reasons to trust you. Implementing these five recommendations is a great way do that.

This post complies with my Disclosure Policy

Found this useful wondering how you can show me your appreciation? Well, there are some ways you can say thanks and support my website: ➡