Explore how building trust through design, performance, social proof, and communication can significantly boost conversions and long-term growth in e-commerce.
90% of consumers report abandoning a purchase due to concerns about a company’s trustworthiness (SurveyMonkey). Ensuring that your site instills trust within your customers is one of the most important factors in driving conversions. Still, building trust isn’t just about making the first sale, it’s about nurturing long-term loyalty to build a relationship with your customers.
71% of customers will stop buying from a company if their trust is broken (Adobe), and 90% of shoppers will pay more for a product that is sold by a trusted brand (PRNewswire). This makes trust a non-negotiable element if you want to drive conversions and growth in your business.
There are countless ways a site can establish trust, from simply ensuring your site runs quickly with a seamless user experience to implementing social proof and trust badges that prominently display why you should be trusted. In this blog, we’ll walk through the most effective ways to build trust through performance, social proof, design, and support.
Website Quality and Performance
Although it’s not a direct display of trust like social proof or security badges, the quality and performance of your website directly impact how consumers view your overall brand.
While having a high-quality, well-performing website will not automatically instill 100% trust in your business, a low-quality, poor-performing website will do much more damage to your image and credibility.
Site Speed
Having a fast-loading website is one of the most critical elements for generating conversions and building credibility. 40% of shoppers won’t wait more than 3 seconds before abandoning an e-commerce site, and almost 70% of consumers say page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer (Queue it).
To improve the speed of your site, compress and optimize images, minimize third-party scripts and plugins, use lazy loading for images and videos, and regularly audit your site.
Image/Video Quality
Product visuals serve as the digital version of the in-store experience. Low resolution, unprofessional visuals can make a site feel untrustworthy or even fraudulent. Invest in high-resolution photos from multiple angles and include lifestyle images to help users visualize your product in real life. If you’re implementing videos, keep them crisp, well-lit, and to the point.
Our client, Glow Luxury, ensure high image quality and zoom abilities for all of their products. As a luxury reseller, images are highly important for customers to feel confident that the condition listed is accurate.
Site Design
The overall look of your website can highly influence what your audience thinks of your company as a whole. A credible website is clean, user-friendly, has high-quality visuals, and provides information about the company, products, and value. A poorly designed website can communicate unreliability, unprofessionalism, and a negative perception of your brand. Stick to a consistent color palette, clear font, and a minimal, modern layout to convey trust and professionalism.
Clean Navigation
Visitors should be able to quickly and easily find exactly what they need from your site. Ensure that navigation menus are simple and organized, search functionality is effective, breadcrumbs are included for larger catalogs, and the path to checkout is short and intuitive.
Mobile Optimization
With over half of e-commerce traffic coming from mobile devices, optimizing your site for mobile users is a must. If a mobile user clicks on your website to find tiny buttons, warped text, and images that take up the entire screen, they will most likely not trust the validity of your site and bounce.
A mobile-first approach to website development allows you to optimally create a mobile website that communicates the value and credibility of your company. Make CTA buttons large and tap-friendly, use legible font sizes and clean spacing, compress media files for faster load times, and ensure the checkout process is smooth and mobile-optimized.
At Udundi, we design and develop mobile-first websites built to convert with custom layouts, mobile-optimized UX, and speed-focused performance. If your mobile site isn’t delivering the results you want, reach out to us. We’d love to help!
Social Proof
Social proof comes in many forms and can have incredible impacts on your brand’s credibility.
Customer Reviews
Customer reviews are trusted 12x more than descriptions that come from manufacturers (Dynamic Yield). By prominently displaying reviews from your customers on product pages, homepages, or checkout pages, you can improve the credibility of your products and brand overall. Including a few negative reviews adds authenticity and can further improve the trustworthiness of your site and other positive reviews.
User-Generated Content
User-generated content is a great way to implement social proof on your site. UGC can be perceived as more authentic and trustworthy because it comes directly from everyday users rather than the business itself. It acts as real-life validation of your products. You can share UGC across product pages, homepages, and social media, and even add incentives for users to submit their content.
Real-Time Proof
Social signals like “45 people from New York are viewing” or “90 people purchased today” leverage the power of community and create a sense of momentum, boosting both trust and urgency.
Trust Badges
The sole purpose of trust badges is to build the trustworthiness and credibility of your brand, site, and products. Purchasing online has brought about many scam websites, fraudulent companies, and theft scandals. This has caused consumers to have their guard up when it comes to purchasing online, especially when they are unfamiliar with a brand.
Types of trust badges:
Secure checkout badges
SSL certificates
Shipping and returns badges
Money-back guarantee badges
Estimated shipping times
Warranty policies
Customer Service
Live Chat
Offering live chat support can drastically improve customer trust. It shows that there’s someone available to answer questions and assist during the buying process. Ensure that responses are timely, friendly, and helpful.
Contact Forms
Make it easy for customers to reach you if something goes wrong. A clearly visible contact page or embedded contact form adds a layer of reassurance. Consider also including a help center or FAQ page to answer common questions and reduce friction.
Clear Policies
Transparent policies show your audience that you have nothing to hide. Display your shipping, return, and privacy policies clearly and make them easy to understand. Avoid hidden fees or vague language because clarity builds trust.
Trustworthy Checkout
Your checkout page is one of the most critical points of your site. Even if a customer has made it to this final step, a confusing or unfamiliar checkout process can lead to cart abandonment. Shopify’s checkout system is widely recognized and trusted by online shoppers. Its familiar layout and intuitive design provide a seamless, one-page checkout experience that helps reduce friction and instill confidence.
You can further streamline the checkout process by integrating QuickPay options like Shop Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and Google Pay, which all signal security and convenience. To build even more trust and flexibility, consider offering payment plans or try-before-you-buy options using tools like AfterPay or Klarna. These give shoppers more confidence in committing to a purchase, especially for higher-priced items.
A smooth, trustworthy checkout experience doesn’t just improve conversions but also strengthens the relationship between your brand and your customers.
Conclusion
Building trust and credibility for your brand through your e-commerce website is about investing in your site and implementing the right strategies to build your reputation. By investing in high-quality design, optimizing performance, showcasing social proof, and maintaining transparency, you can improve your credibility, conversions, and overall performance.
If you’re interested in chatting about strategies to build trust and life conversion rates, reach out to us. We offer free site audits and are happy to help you identify opportunities to grow with confidence.