Gaining customer trust is the hardest part for startups in 2021.
Understanding where the market is headed is extremely important to make the right decisions, yet, at times, businesses predict it all wrong.
Since there are already many businesses offering similar products with a healthy reputation in the market, attracting customers is quite a task.
Though the competition is high amongst brands, attracting customers will be fun if you follow a few things.
Before we delve into the tips to gain customer trust with zero sales, let’s understand why is it essential for a startup?
Significance Of Gaining Customer Trust For Startups
To retain a customer, you first need to win his/her heart. Most well-established companies get into a knack of taking their customer base for granted, allowing potential startups to take charge of them.
Startups these days are understanding that building a customer base is essential than a short-term sales spree.
A customer base becomes a stable source of revenue for businesses and induces other potential customers to join them.
For startups, providing full customer support services and high-discounts schemes are the best ways to build a customer base.
Once a customer feels satisfied, he gets encouraged to repeat his purchase. Thus, customer trust is of substantial value to startups.
Now that we know the importance of gaining customer trust, let’s dive into some tips to help you build it, even with zero initial sales.
Six Tips To Earn Customer Trust When You Have Zero Sales
1. Connect With Your Customers On A Personal Level
As consumers, we trust people over businesses. Recommended and reviewed products are more widely trusted than ones that are yet to be bought.
People will only recommend adding a five-star review for your product when they are satisfied with not only your product but your after-sales services as well.
How your customer care executives treat your customers has a direct impact on the perspective mindset.
So, build a personal connection with customers wherein you take their feedback and solve their issues.
2. Depict All The Safety Measures That You Have Taken To Protect Customer Data
In 2021, customers are aware of cybercrimes that can happen to them.
Financial institutions and governments of the world have created enough hype about data protection, and rightly, so customers nowadays want a safe and secure website to transact from.
As a business, you need to provide the utmost protection by using security protocols like an SSL Certificate. There are many types of SSL certificates to choose from; wherein a Wildcard SSL certificate could be your best bet for securing multiple first level subdomains of the chosen primary domain.
You can also use security badges as a mark of safety offered by PCI for payment protection and a secure padlock from the Certificate Authority.
3. Add a Return Policy and FAQ section to Gain Trust.
A return policy section indicates that you have the utmost trust in your product. A company’s satisfaction with its products speaks volumes of the quality that they provide.
Customers worldwide are encouraged to buy products that they could return within 30 days: if unsatisfied.
Attractive return policies also show that you value your customer’s experience and want them to get the best product in hand.
Apart from that, an informative FAQ section is always a big plus when it comes to a product purchase.
Customers are never short of questions when they are about to buy a product online, which is why an FAQ section is needed.
Answer all possible questions that a customer could ask about your product in the FAQ section to improve customer trust.
4. The Product Description Should Be Specific And Detailed
If your product is precisely described, the customer will decide whether it suits his requirements or not.
Here are a few things you need to keep in mind while preparing a product description:
- Measurements should be exact.
- Weight should be accurate.
- Information about all the ingredients, whether good or bad.
- Use infographics to explain your product in detail with fewer words.
- Mention specific features.
- Use videos to show your product in a good light.
5. Adhere to the “try before you buy” policy
Sample giveaways are a great way to induce your customers into buying a product. If a customer tries a product at first, he/she will be morally motivated to buy if he likes it.
It is also a great way to develop a personal bond with your customers and give them a taste of your product.
However, do not run this policy for all your items; choose those that do not put you under substantial losses.
Prepare your samples in a smaller size for taste purposes only. Offer your samples to influencers who can spread the word about your product on social media channels.
6. Run A Self-Assessment Test
You have created a robust website and secured it with an SSL certificate; now, it is time to put your business process to the test.
You can initiate a purchase from your store and assess how the investment is panning out with an unbiased attitude.
The test can help you identify loopholes like transaction speed, load-time, payment processing time and delivery time, etc.
You can also see how your store looks on a mobile compared to a desktop and fix minor bugs.
Self-assessment will help customers get a robust experience of your website.
To Conclude
As technology is progressing, gaining customer trust is getting more complicated for new startups.
If a startup is assessing market conditions well, connect with customers on a deeper level, give them guaranteed security of their data, and back it up with an authentic return policy, everything becomes easy.
