DESIGN & UX: How to Design a Trustworthy eCommerce Website

Trustworthiness for an eCommerce website is crucial to ensure not only a good customer experience but to also spread the word of your brand and customer conversion. It’s actually pretty easy to create a trustworthy site if you know the basics on how to do so. Today we’ll introduce a few key items and ways to create a website that promotes trustworthiness to ensure customer satisfaction and safety on the internet.

Easy-to-Find Contact Information

You’ll want to put contact information somewhere pertinent like the main navigation or footer. Creating a basic contact us page is a good idea with the different avenues on how to get in touch with customer support. This can be through a phone number, contact form or e-mail address.

Product Reviews

Most everyone looks at product reviews online now before making a purchase. Product reviews with specific details, honest opinions and knowledge of the specific product build trustworthiness for a brand. Users like to see unbiased reviews on a website in order to gain trust and make a decision on whether or not to move forward with a purchase.

Product Descriptions

Most everyone looks at product reviews online now before making a purchase. Product reviews with specific details, honest opinions and knowledge of the specific product build trustworthiness for a brand. Users like to see unbiased reviews on a website in order to gain trust and make a decision on whether or not to move forward with a purchase.

Shipping & Return Policies

An easy way to build trustworthiness on your site is to offer a clear shipping and return policy. Shipping should be convenient and as fast as possible. You’ll also want returns to be easy and allow for enough time for the consumer to test the product at home. If you are able to offer free shipping, this is also an added bonus since most large retailers are doing this already.

Trust Badges

Trust badges are a very effective way to let your users know your website has been verified and is trustworthy from another source. Some common trust badge sources are: SSL, Authorize.net, McAfee WebAdvisor and TrustLock but there are many other ones out there. You can also create your own trust badges that link to different protocols you have in place on your website for safety. We recommend placing these badges on product pages, check out pages or in other obvious places where a user will easily see them. 

Things that hurt trustworthiness on a website:

• Pop-ups
• Bad product photography
• Poor design choices
• Poor mobile design experience
• Hard-to-read text
• Misspellings & grammatical errors
• Broken links
• Lack of information on products or company
• Lack of testimonials or reviews per product
• No social media or social media that is inactive
• Negative company or product reviews