eCommerce has seen a big boom in Dhaka over the past few years. While increasing number of people are relying on eCommerce for having their daily requirements, there is also a growing discomfort about the service, price, and quality of products offered by many eCommerce companies in the country. This is largely because many ecommerce companies don’t put enough importance in delivering their best.
eCommerce is largely a service business, except if you are a manufacturer who uses eCommerce as a distribution channel. If you are not offering wow-inspiring service, you should be in danger. Then there is a growing competition in the space. New players are entering the market at an interesting pace since entry barrier is low and we are still at the early stage.
Consequently, it is hard to get attention and grow a loyal base of customers. If you are facing this problem for a longer period than usual, may be people are not still trusting you.
While building trust is a long time effort, you get to try early and consistently to achieve trust of your customers. Here are six things, put together for two separate stages of your company, you can do to soothe your potential customers’ fears and make them more likely to buy your products.
[su_divider top="no" text=" " divider_color="#e8e7e6" link_color="#edde29" size="1" margin="10"][/su_divider]
For Early stage eCommerce
Since you are new in the market, you have the opportunity to build and shape your brand awareness from the ground up. There are few ways you can build a sense of trust in your brand:
1. Build awareness
People don’t want to buy something from a website that they don’t already know. As an early stage startup, you spend some budget in marketing your website with credible information. You may put information about products and shipments you already sent, number of customers you already served, reference of your customers. Invest in creating awareness.
2. Make it Personal
People don’t trust pages or websites. They trust people. So it’s crucial that your website has a human factor. Use your about us page to present not just information about your company, but a message from your company’s Founder or a Meet Our Team section with photos and names or both. This helps people to connect with your company and increase your chance of being trusted.
3. Look Professional and Use Testimonials
Make sure you website looks professional and fully ready, nothing half done. Make it easy to contact you and describe everything about you in black and white. Have a FAQ page, if required, and use testimonial from customers you have already served.
[su_divider top="no" text=" " divider_color="#e8e7e6" link_color="#edde29" size="1" margin="10"][/su_divider]
Going forward
Now that people know about you and you have a small but growing base of customers, don’t rest on your success. Rather focus on growing. You just passed the entrance exam, there is more to it. Here are few more things you should remember going forward;
1. Surprise your customers with service
Provide the best service possible. eCommerce is a service business, as I wrote before. You win over your customers by providing a service that he/she remembers. In Bangladesh, there is a huge opportunity for this. Very few company care about customers and customers service. Invest heavily in customer service.
2. Quality and price
Common complain about eCommerce is that they charge more for products of average or low quality. Since people often can’t touch and feel a product unless they purchase it, people often feel less confident about eCommerce purchase. Due to instance from many companies, there is already a bad rep about eCommerce. Never fall into that trap. Give best quality of product and ask for a reasonable price consistent with the market.
3. Deliver on time
Fast delivery is one of the key value propositions of eCommerce and often our ecommerce companies miss it. If you miss the delivery time, you miss the entire ecommerce service point. Work hard to reach on time. Go extra mile to achieve that.
4. Have a clear return and refund policy
It is important that people get to return if they don’t feel that they get the product they wanted. You should have return and refund policy in place and it must not confuse anyone.
5. Make security of your customers a priority
Make sure that your website is secure by using secure sockets layer (SSL) and also ensure security for people who want to pay online.
Although many people appreciate the convenience and speed of online shopping, they may hesitate to buy from a new and unknown company. Most of the difficulty boils down to the problem of trust. While gaining trust is a long term issue, it is incremental as well. You get to build is slowly but surely. Make promises but work harder on keeping those promises, rest should follow.
_________
About the sponsor: This story is made possible in part by our friends at eCourier Limited, a next generation logistics company based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, whose generosity enables us to publish premium stories online at no cost to our readers. Thank you, eCourier, for teaming up with us in 2016.
