How to Build Trust in a Digital Space and Why it Matters

Being trusted by your customers and clients, especially in a saturated digital market, is a key component of how to thrive and survive as a business. Trust isn't built overnight, and it doesn't always come for free, but it can be gained with relative ease if you do the right things.

For entrepreneurs and business owners trying to make it online, one of the biggest ways to ensure you are successful is to build trust with your clients and customers. This is true in just about every industry that has a significant online presence, but it is especially true in crowded online markets where there are lots of options for people to turn to. Building trust and ensuring that you shepherd that trust and don't squander it are difficult things to do for an online business, but they are also integral. 

As digital interactions lack many of the ways we would normally be able to establish trust, through eye contact and other components of physical presence, business owners and entrepreneurs must instead rely on other tools and techniques to establish and maintain trust digitally. Let's take a closer look at what exactly those tools and techniques might be, and why they are so important in our digital world.

Why is Trust so Important in Digital Markets?

It might seem odd, but for many people, trust is a very important qualifier for where and who they will interact with online, much more so than when they are dealing with a business in real life. There are a number of factors as to why, but they can be boiled down to a single word: Anonymity. When you are running a business online, your customers and clients can't see you, they can't see your products, they can't pick them up and hold them, they must trust that you are who and what you say you are and that you will stick to your word. It can be a lot for some people, and the smallest part of your presentation could sound alarm bells that cause someone to take their business elsewhere.

Let's take a commonly saturated online marketplace as an example: The online casino industry. If someone from NZ is looking to find a new online casino to play at, they will want to feel safe and know that they can trust the place they are going to play at. If one platform is listed on several sites as being a trusted NZ casino site with verified payout and has some reviews from players detailing their experiences, and another has no information about its services and appears to have sprung up overnight, which site do you think that person is more likely to trust, and therefore visit? 

Being able to establish trust, even before a customer gets to you, can be a powerful determiner in generating business or sales. But how do you generate this trust?

Be Transparent, Show You Are Credible

Being transparent and revealing more information than you need to is a great way to build digital trust. You want to be as open with your customers as possible, allowing them to see that you are who you say and that you will provide exactly the sorts of services you claim. 

Some great ways to practise transparency online for businesses include:

• Having clear pricing and cost information. Don't hide shipping or transaction fees; let customers know exactly what anything is going to cost right from the start.
   
• Provide contact information. As well as having clear and usable contact information, providing information on the contact turnaround will make you more trustworthy.
   
• Provide simple terms and conditions. Try to avoid using unnecessarily complex language in your terms and conditions and privacy policies.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but these are some great first steps towards increasing your transparency.

Provide Good Security and Privacy for Customers

Have you ever clicked on a website from Google and your browser or Google stops you and warns you that the connection is unsecured? Did you ignore the warning and visit the website anyway? Odds are, you probably turned back and looked for a different website. This might be an extreme example, but providing good security and privacy for your customers will increase the trust you receive.

Digital security can be as simple as:

• Offering two-factor authentication (2FA). If you handle large sums of money or plan to store customers' financial information, 2FA is a must.
   
• SSL encryption. Using SSL encryption will let customers feel comfortable that their information is private and secure when communicating with your website.
   
• Do audits! Running your own in-house digital security auditsis a great idea and will help you to close any gaps in your protection.

The safer that customers and clients feel, the more trust they will have in you.

Always Do What You Say You Will

Just as in normal business relations, being consistent and doing what you say you will do is one of the best ways to build trust. If you have repeated interactions with clients and they always find that you will do exactly what you say, those clients will have a great deal of trust in you and are likely to enjoy doing business with you.

It can be hard to prove this to new customers, but some ways to practise consistency include:

• Meet deadlines. Sometimes it might not be possible, but always striving to meet deadlines and communicating delays as early as possible is crucial.
   
• Uphold service standards. If everyone you do business with receives the same high level of service, word is likely to get around that you do consistently fair business.
   
• Be truthful. When possible, provide customers and clients with accurate and up-to-date information.

Being consistent is almost impossible to fake, and it will turn long-term customers into free advertising for your services.

Final Thoughts

Standing out in a digital marketplace can be hard, but if you can establish yourself as a business or enterprise that can be trusted, that's the sort of reputation you can be proud of. It might not be easy, and there aren't really any shortcuts, but doing the hard work and establishing trust will stand you in good stead when customers are choosing between different options.