All You Need Is Trust

By Simon  |  16 May 2017 23:00:00

The internet is a great leveller. There's no reason why you can't have a website as good as the leading competitor in your field. (Of course if you use Sellr, it will probably be better!)

However, if you're a new business then the leading competitor probably has a huge headstart on you.

Most businesses make most of their money from repeat customers. In other words, businesses make most of their money from people who have already purchased from them before.

There is a simple reason for this.... Trust. People buy from businesses that they trust. They trust that they will get what they are after, it will be delivered on time and the quality will be as good as they are expecting (or better). Once a business has created that trust relationship with a customer, then the customer is far more likely to buy from that merchant than to go looking for a different merchant.

This is why many businesses take years to get off the ground. It takes time to build trust with prospective customers and its difficult to prise those customers away from merchants they already trust.

However, there are things you can do to speed up the process,

1. You need to show that your business (maybe even you!) are an absolute expert in your field. If you're selling cushions, then you need to know how they are made, what they are made from, what each type of cushion is suitable for, how to clean them, famous people who use cushions, how to care for a cushion, cushion cleaning advice ... even with an object such as cushions, the list is endless.

You need to write articles on your site for everything you can think of about the items you are selling which may be of interest to a prospective purchaser. Online marketplaces simply cannot compete with the knowledge you can provide, so if you can show that you're an expert, cusomers will trust you and your sales should ramp up.

2. You need to spend time on the content on your site rather than worring about whether you are offering enough promotions, or if your prices are competitive. Content will be picked up by search engines and will provide an endless stream of visitors to your site.

3. You need to build an excellent email strategy for both customers and prospects. Get prospects to sign up to your email list using competitions and offers on your website and on social media. Then regularly email your customer base about the items or services you are offering. Note that most prospects will need 7 communications before they will act, so don't underestimate how many emails to write. Most people are really interested in reading information about items they are interested in, so don't send sales information, but send friendly informative articles.

These are just a few things, but i'm sure you can see that you need to constantly work on building that trust relationship. Once you get a lot of customers, they will pass on that trust to others in the form of recommendations. This is when sales can really start to fly!

If you're not yet selling, or do not have a website, then take a look at Sellr. It has everything you need and more, and of course, you can trust us to keep you informed of what you need to be doing to make those sales rocket!