Trust is a must when you’re operating in the ecommerce sphere. In the age of social media and online reviews, managing your reputation is a very important part of doing business. In fact, it’s needed to stay in business. Fortunately, building an impeccable reputation online is a relatively straightforward process.
Here’s what you need to know.
Maintain a Professional Image
One of the initial things a shopper does upon arriving at your site for the first time is look for signs of trustworthiness. It should be cleanly designed, professional in appearance and free of spelling, grammatical and punctuation errors.
Your photography should be sharp, well composed and pleasing to the eye. You should also earn trust badges from entitles like theBetter Business Bureau, PayPal and VeriSign.
Incorporate responsive design so your site looks just as good on handheld devices as it does on desktop monitors. Include your logo on every page of the site, as well as your blog and your social media postings. If you have yet to develop one, take advantage of an online logo creator.
Blog Regularly
Maintaining a meaningful blog is key to establishing yourself as a trusted expert. Blogs give you a forum to demonstrate your knowledge and be helpful to others who may have questions about your industry. They also give you a means of communicating directly with interested parties to discuss your products and services in detail. Blogging also helps you give people an idea of your personality.
Just remember to make your posts more about service than sales. In other words, 80 percent (or more) of your blog content should be useful information, 20 percent (or less) should be sales pitches. You want people to see your blog as a trusted resource rather than the marketing device it really is.
Manage Your Social Media Presence Carefully
Producing content for your blog will give you an abundance of material to share in social media. Use it to promote the service-oriented pieces you run on your blog site. This will help you cultivate an image of helpfulness, as opposed to that of a self-serving entity more interested in making dollars than sense.
Keep an Eye on Review Sites
Set up Google alerts for your name, as well as that of your business and keywords relevant to your endeavors. This will notify you should any of those elements start trending. Further, if you receive a negative review, you’ll be positioned to get out in front and present your perspective.
Keep in mind, the whole world is watching. Respond to both praise and criticism. Ignoring negative comments gives them credence. Always maintain an air of professionalism, even if people say disparaging things about you.Never respond to insults with insults and above all, do not get into arguments. Make your case, back it up with links to citations supporting your facts and leave it alone.
Represent Honesty, Transparency and Quality
If you’re defrauding people, your practices will catch up with you. The world is an exceptionally small place these days. It’s in your best interest to be mindful of the Golden Rule.
If you provide quality products at reasonable prices and make every effort to conduct business in an honest and transparent fashion, word will get around. Conversely, if you do the opposite, word of that will get around too.
Building an impeccable reputation is just a matter of doing right by your customers and always striving to deliver value. Keeping an eye out for interlopers who would stoop to besmirch your good name and responding to them in an intellectual fashion will help you keep your hard-won image intact.