In eCommerce, customer trust is crucial.
Enhancing trust by using social proof is a surefire way to increase sales because customers are more likely to purchase items from a store that seems trustworthy. But if your website does not seem trustworthy, your sales may fall – even if you have great products.
And the numbers don’t lie.
40% of consumers say that trust is one of the most important factors when it comes to shopping online, putting it on par with other factors like ease of search, good deals, and product choice.
So if you’re a Magento entrepreneur looking for the best way to create customer confidence — whether it’s by showing that your customer data is protected, your online payments are secure, your CX is seamless, or simply that others have purchased from you before — there are some eCommerce tools you shouldn’t ignore.
Here are five must-have Magento extensions to build a trusted online store:
If your eCommerce website is ever hacked or your lose customer data, your reputation can be seriously harmed – and it may never recover. The costs of legal liabilities, loss of customer trust, and diminished word of mouth marketing add up quite a bit.
It’s estimated that each customer record lost in a data breach costs eCommerce companies an average of $172.
To combat hacks and security breaches, ZeroBase Software Encryption offers a high level of encryption to protect your customer’s personal information.
ZeroBase Software Encryption encrypts all sensitive and sales-related data on your website, including addresses, names and more. In addition, it helps protect against SQL injections and other common vulnerabilities and uses an advanced caching system to enhance security while minimizing its impact on loading times and page performance.
While Magento has support for some built-in payment gateways out of the box, like PSiGate and Braintree, you may want to choose your own payment processor — especially if you have access to one that your customers are sure to recognize and trust.
Stripe is a great option.
Stripe is one of the world’s largest, most reputable and recognizable payment processing partners. (Not to mention its reasonable fees.) This extension is easy to integrate into any Magento installation, and allows you to accept payment from all major credit and debit cards, including Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Discover, Diner’s Club, Giropay and more. Stripe can also accept Apple and Google Pay, along with dozens of other payment methods.
It’s completely PCI/DSS compliant, which helps you control your liability, and enhances security with CVC/AVS verification on all payments.
And if you’re ready to tap into new markets? Stripe will even help you expand your international customer base, as it supports a total of 25 countries and 130 different currencies for purchases.
3. LiveChat
Believe it or not, the concept of live chat has been around since 1998.
And although many technologies have come and gone, live chat is still around and continues to thrive. And for good reason:
75% of customers prefer to use live chat over other communication options, like email, contact forms, and phone calls.
79% of businesses say that live chat has had a positive effect on revenue, sales, and customer loyalty
It’s very simple.
Consumers are more likely to trust a business when it’s easy to contact a live person at the company.
Funny how in our digital age, speaking to a human is still a high priority. So much so, there’s a website dedicated to providing customer service phone numbers where you can speak to a human.
If you want to integrate a live chat function into your website (and you should), the LiveChat Magento extension is a great choice. It will instantly make your site appear more legitimate and trustworthy, helping you increase customer satisfaction and conversions.
LiveChat has been designed to be lightweight and easy to use. It integrates natively with third-party apps and CRM databases like Google Analytics, SalesForce, and Hubspot.
Best of all, with its secure, encrypted design, all of your customer’s messages are safe and their private information is protected.
FAQs are an often overlooked but powerful tool for building trust and allows customers to get answers to common questions without having to contact a customer service representative.
When used properly, they can boost SEO, sales, and help you demonstrate your expertise.
While you can always build your own FAQ templates, the Advanced FAQ extension by FMEextensions is a powerful tool that allows you to build high-quality FAQ pages quickly and easily.
It comes with 5 different themes, support for multiple topics and sections, searchable FAQs, and SEO tools which help you optimize your FAQs for SEO.
With a simple WYSIWYG editor, you can quickly create sophisticated, attractive FAQ pages, even if you have no web development experience.
When it comes to building trust and social proof for eCommerce, the most important tool is to integrate online reviews into your store. 84% of people trust online reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family. 90% of people read online reviews before making a purchase, and 97% of customers say that online reviews are a key factor when shopping online.
We can’t stress this enough: online reviews are critical to the success of your business.
This is one area where you have to nail it. No skimping. No cheapo, no-name solution.
There are many choices, but Trustpilot is an industry leader in customer reviews, listed alongside Google My Business, Yelp and Facebook.
The Magento extension is available for any Trustpilot user (including those on the free tier), with tools to automatically invite customers to leave service and product reviews, invite your past customers, and a drag-and-drop feature to showcase reviews on your website with just a few clicks.
The biggest value is arguably for a business to display a high Trustpilot ranking directly on its website.
Ace Exhibits capitalizes on the feature big-time directly on their homepage:
This helps to reassure potential new customers that the business is indeed worthy of their attention, and can deliver when it comes to customer service.
Trustpilot also supports seller ratings extensions with Google, Bing, and Yahoo, which can help boost traffic and conversions, as well as social sharing on websites like Twitter, Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Because customer reviews come from verified purchases, this means that Trustpilot ratings carry a particular weight. This is all the more important as Google may display Trustpilot ratings with a business website listing in Google searches.
If you upgrade to a paid subscription, you can get even more tools like a powerful analytics dashboard, integration with software suites such as Zendesk, as well as Hootsuite and Facebook, SEO tools, and embedded forms which allow you to collect online reviews even more quickly.
Build a Trusted Magento Store
Thanks to the open-source nature of Magento and the thousands of extensions available, it’s never been easier to build a trusted online store.
With these five extensions, you can gather online reviews, secure customer information, build social proof, and provide better customer service.
That all adds up to more conversions, more sales, and more profits – so if you’re ready to take your eCommerce store to the next level, consider checking out a few of these extensions today.
And if you want to learn more about all of the ways you can use Trustpilot reviews?
We have just the thing. Don't miss our Complete Guide to Reviews below.
Author Bio: Dovid Rotshtein, Marketing Manager at 121eCommerce
121eCommerce is an eCommerce development agency specializing in both B2B and B2C eCommerce. They are a Magento Certified Professional Partner with a proven track record of Magento 2 launches, project rescues and complex website builds. With a knack for quick communication, detailed reporting, and a friendly staff, they offer a full stack of Magento services to drive your online growth.
