2018 was an interesting year for consumer trust.
Not only were we rocked by the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, a Forbes exclusive with WhatsApp co-founder, Brian Acton, further disrupted consumer perception of Facebook.
Theranos got shut down after squandering nearly one billion dollars of investors’ money. Founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes—a former media darling—faces criminal charges for fraud and a prison sentence up to 20 years.
And let’s not talk about Uber’s culture of gender discrimination and other shady practices that came to light over the past year.
But even before all of these scandals garnered major headlines, even as early as 2016, 50% of consumers reported they didn’t have much trust in businesses.
The bar for businesses is higher than ever.
The amount of hard work and luck required to build a successful business has always been immense. That’s why 90% of new businesses fail.
Historically, a successful business needed only a viable idea and above-average execution to do well in the market and scale for more success. However, these days, you also need to overcome widespread mistrust and skepticism from consumers if you want your business—ecommerce or otherwise—to succeed.
Ratings and reviews are the foundation of trust.
Your product ratings and reviews build the trust you need to find success in today’s market.
An Ipsos Global Trends study found that 76% of US consumers decided where to buy based on positive and negative reviews. That figure went up by about 10% in the space of 2 years.
And this isn’t just a product decision anymore: How consumers perceive and how much they trust your brand influences whether they purchase from you or not.
And even though there’s a general distrust of “big business,” 65% of consumers feel “brands I trust are more important than ever to me.”
That means that while building trust can be difficult, taking the time, effort, and energy to build that trust is well worth the investment.
In fact, the future of ecommerce is building a profitable brand that your customers love and trust.
Showcase your product ratings and reviews in more places.
In order to build trust, CM Commerce developed three widgets for product reviews that will help you showcase your customer feedback in more ways and places.
These widgets are honest, open, and transparent. We want to help you build an omnipresent feeling of trust around your brand, which means making your ratings and reviews relevant and visible in as many customer interactions as possible.
New tab widget
The first is a new tab that you can show off on all of the pages of your website, making it a constant reminder of your available online reviews.
When your website visitor clicks on the tab, you can show off all of your reviews (for all of your products) to give your visitor an overall picture of how much your past customers love and trust you.
New trust badge
Trust badges increase conversion rates and our new trust badge uses your total number of ratings, as well as an average rating, to convince customers they can safely complete their purchase.
The simple, unobtrusive design focuses on the data and can easily be used in your website footer or checkout pages. Take a look:
New “All Products” reviews widget
We also have a new review widget available that you can use on non-product pages to showcase all reviews for all products on any page of your website.
This is a great way to build a dynamic, general testimonial-like page.
Widget editing easier than ever
Adding code to your website is never a fun or overly easy task, especially if you’re not technical or proficient with HTML. Having a website and online store means code is an unavoidable part of your job.
But we wanted to your job easier.
We have built a brand new widget editor for you that lives on your website instead of the CM Commerce dashboard. When you are logged into CM Commerce and browsing your store, you’ll see the widget editor on any page that already includes a widget. You can then edit the widget right there and see your changes reflected in real-time.
Wrap up
Building trust is more important than ever to consumers. If prospects don’t trust you, they won’t convert. But when consumers do trust you, they’ll come back to your brand time after time.
Building trust is never a one-and-done process. As an ecommerce business, you’ll need to constantly keep your customers’ needs front and center. From welcome emails to re-engagement campaigns and beyond, we seamlessly integrate with your ecommerce platforms—Magento, Shopify, and WooCommerce—so you’ll have all the features you need to exceed your goals.
CM Commerce features:
- Pre-made conversion campaigns to recover revenue from abandoned carts
- Follow-up segmented and personalized emails for cross-selling
- Product reviews that spotlight your happy customers and build trust (and sales)
- Automated feedback to increase repeat revenue
- Ready-to-go templates or custom receipts, coupons, and rewards with your branding
Try CM Commerce for free today.