5 Ways to Inspire Your First-Time Site Visitors to Trust You

Every eCommerce website needs to win the confidence of its first-time visitors.

Without doing this, you can expect more shopping carts to be abandoned and overall sales to dwindle.

If you can build an instant trust, you will propel your eCommerce site to higher levels of power and success.

Shoppers do not purchase from businesses – they purchase products from individuals they trust.

According to an extensive research done by SeeWhy, 99% of customers will not make purchases during their initial visit to an online shopping site.

Your visitors need to build some confidence with your site. Your work is to encourage them to make the purchase decision.

So, how do you connect, motivate, and convince your first-time visitors to avoid leaving your site without completing a purchase? What compels them to press the buy button and leave with your products or services?

Here are 5 proven ways on how to win the trust of your first-time visitors and avoid hurting your revenue.

Design Your Site Well

According to a recent report released by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, at the United States Library of Medicine, the average attention span of people has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8.25 seconds in 2015.

Therefore, you need less than 10 seconds to inspire your first-time visitors to trust your site. Can you achieve this using a cluttered and crowded site design?

Your eCommerce site has to be designed professionally. Your site should be intuitive without any unnecessary fluff. Importantly, your home page should be very welcoming.

The home page is what gives the first-time impression to your site visitors. It should not be cluttered. Keep it simple and avoid displaying several options that can make your first-time customers confused.

If the design of your site makes it to load slowly, then you will be bleeding your first-time visitors and few will be inspired to stay.

According to Kissmetrics, a 1 second delay in site load time can make revenues to drop by 7%. So, if your website is selling products worth $100,000 every day, a 1 second delay in loading could result in an annual loss of about $2.5 million.

Furthermore, your site’s design should be mobile-friendly. Currently, most people use their smart phones and other mobile gadgets to access the Internet.

So, you need to make your site mobile-friendly so that your first-time visitors can easily access it using their mobile devices. More so, Google recently made changes to their ranking algorithm to benefit sites that are mobile-friendly.

Use Clear Site Navigation

You need to keep your site clean and without clutter such that your first-time visitors can easily find what they want. If your site is not easy to navigate, your visitors will leave and few or none will ever come back.

Your site should be clear and have one objective – to make your visitors make the buy decision.

Include navigation bars with clear categories that will allow first-time customers to look for what they want without any hassles. Do not make them guess where they should go next. You should point it out and make it obvious.

You need to place the most vital elements of your eCommerce site “above the fold”. It is the first section of your site that people see on their screen, for example, deals of the day or available offers. Visitors can see the section without scrolling down the site.

The truth is that shoppers will decide whether they want to stay on your site or not based on the items you place at the top. So, a clear site navigation that places the important stuff above the fold will increase your conversion rate.

More so, you can use color psychology to direct your first-time visitors to important places on your site. Color normally influences the decisions customers make.

Some colors ignite luxury while others stimulate cheerfulness. So, with a proper blend of colors, you can increase your eCommerce sales to the people visiting your site for the first time.

Use Trust Signals

Trust signals are features of your eCommerce site that will instigate trust in the minds of your first-time visitors.

According to a study carried out by Taylor Nelson Sofres in 2006, shoppers will not complete 70% of web purchases because of distrusting the shopping site. This lack of confidence results in an annual loss of more than $1.9 billion.

Here are some effective trust signals you can use on your site to win the confidence of your first-time visitors.

a) Use testimonials and reviews

Including statements about how other people regard your products or services is a powerful way of influencing your site visitors to make the buy decision. When other people talk about the items you are selling, you will appear real and authentic.

b) Include contact and communication

In spite of the growing popularity of buying items through the Internet, most customers are still stuck to the trust associated with providing physical location and contact information.

c) Provide payment assurance

You need to instigate trust in the checkout process by providing different convenient and trustworthy payment methods as well as adding third-party badges and certifications.

Create Great Content

You should create great content that resonates to the needs of your site visitors. If your site has a clear message, it will result in better engagement and higher conversion rates.

When someone comes to your eCommerce site for the first time, he or she should be able to make out what the site is about within seconds. Therefore, you need to use simple and grammatically correct language throughout your site.

The headlines on your site should be well written and properly placed on the site to command the attention of the visitors. The wording on the call-to-action elements should be provocative enough.

Furthermore, include policy features such as “Shipment Policy” and “Return Policy” to address immediately some questions your visitors might have.

Offer Incentives

Since the expenses involved in getting a new shopper far exceeds that for ensuring a present shopper does not leave, and for most websites new visitors consist of more than 50% of all traffic – providing incentives to new shoppers seems sensible.

For example, you can offer a coupon code that first-time visitors can use for enjoying some discounts on their initial purchases.

Shoppers like price cuts, it’s no big secret. Therefore, you can use this method to convert first-time visitors to be your loyal customers.

Importantly, you should always deliver what you promise. The coupon codes should work well at checkout. You can send first-time visitors away forever if you have not fulfilled your promise.

Conclusion

The Internet is crowded with thousands of sites selling every kind of product. And, influencing a first-time visitor to your site to make the purchase decision is a hard work.

Trust is what enables an Internet traveler to change from being a visitor to a shopper. A visitor needs to trust an eCommerce website before making a decision to place an order on the site.

So, you need to inspire the people who come to your site for the first time to trust you. Otherwise, your eCommerce website will die.

Featured image credit: Pixabay

Tagged conversion rate, first-time visitors, site trust