The Internet Merchants Association blog had an interesting post about how eBay sellers are forced to reduce prices to overcome the reluctance of suspicious buyers. Conversely, Amazon’s high trustworthiness allows them to charge a premium. How can the individual shopowner avoid being forced to give an “eBay discount?”
Probably the simplest way is to add trust-builders to your site. Easy to implement trust-builders are:
- Post an address and telephone number on every page.
- Make the telephone number particularly visible during the checkout process; encourage customers with questions to pick up the phone.
- Provide a “FAQ” page to answer common questions about the fulfillment process and an “About Us” page to describe your credentials and expertise.
Once you’ve taken these three low-cost steps, the next thing you might want to consider is buying a security seal. These have been shown to be trust-builders, but they come at a much higher cost than the three steps above.
