How to earn the TrustedSite Issue-Free Orders certification and show your business consistently delivers outstanding service

With so many tools and platforms available to help just about anyone start a website, new online businesses are born daily. This is great for consumers because it means they have choices when they shop online, but not so great for sites hoping to grow their sales. In order to convert as many visitors as possible, sites have to find ways to stand out from the crowd.

Among the many strategies that sites employ to do this, showcasing user-generated content, like customer reviews, is one of the most popular. When visitors have the opportunity to see the words of previous customers, it helps them decide if they are making the right purchase. And it really works, too. According to our recent survey of 600 US-based consumers, customer testimonials impact 83% of shoppers’ purchasing decisions.

The problem is that when customers are asked to write a review, they will oftentimes simply provide feedback about the product they purchased and not about their overall experience with the business. Product feedback is very useful when you’re trying to decide whether or not a particular item is what you’re looking for, but shoppers can also have many other questions and concerns before making a purchase.

Will I receive my order on time? Is the customer service team responsive and helpful? Will I be charged correctly? These are just a few of the additional questions that many customers want answered before making a purchase.

To help sites give visitors insight into their track record as a reliable business, we created the TrustedSite Issue-Free Orders certification. With this certification, sites are able to collect feedback from customers about their experience making a purchase on the site. That feedback is then used to calculate the site’s Issue-Free Orders rate, which shows the percentage of orders that the site has fulfilled without a hitch. And when customers have a great experience, they are able to submit a written testimonial that sites can display with the testimonials trustmark. When new visitors see this trustmark, they can feel more confident making a purchase knowing that the business has a history of satisfying previous customers.

To earn the Issue-Free Orders certification, sites must meet certain requirements. First, sites must sign up for a TrustedSite Pro account. Once that is complete, sites need to install the conversion tracking code and enable a method for customers to opt-in to the Shopper Identity Protection and Issue-Free Orders service. After at least 10 conversions have been tracked, the site will be able to display their Issue-Free Orders rate as long as it is 95% or higher.

After making a purchase from a site with the Issue-Free Orders certification, customers who have opted in will receive an email asking them to provide feedback about their experience. By default, the email is scheduled to send 7 days after the purchase, but sites can customize this if they wish.

Within this email, customers can click a link to report their experience as great, okay, or bad. They can also report that they haven’t received their order yet, in which case the email will be resent in one week.

If a customer rates their experience as great, they will be asked to provide a testimonial to help future customers gain insight into the business. Sites can enable these to display in the testimonials trustmark which they can embed in key areas where concerns about order fulfillment are strong.

If a customer rates their experience as okay, they will be thanked and their feedback will be logged.

If a customer says they had a bad experience, they will be asked to provide details of what went wrong. Reported issues are compiled in the site’s Issue-Free Orders dashboard in their account. From that dashboard, sites can create a new email to the customer to begin to work out a solution to the problem. Once they’ve come to an agreement, the site can mark the issue as resolved in their dashboard.

As a follow-up, the customer will be sent an email asking them if the issue was resolved to their satisfaction. If they answer yes, the issue will be logged as resolved. If they say no, the issue will be marked as Resolved - Failed and no further action will be available. To maintain a high level of trust and transparency with consumers, TrustedSite cannot remove any issues that fail to be resolved from a site’s account.

Get a complete look at the Issue-Free Orders customer experience in this video:

A site’s Issue-Free Orders Rate is calculated by dividing the number of reported issues by the total number of purchases recorded by the conversion tracking code. For example, if your site has 100 orders and 20 customers rate their experience as great, 10 rate it okay, 3 report an issue, and 67 don’t respond, the formula would work as follows: 1 - (3 [number of issues] / 100 [total orders]) = 0.97 or 97%.

Sites can display their Issue-Free Orders rate in a number of ways. One simple way is to include the Issue-Free Orders engagement trustmark in the site footer. This trustmark displays the site’s current Issue-Free Orders rate. Over 32% of consumers look for information about a site’s business policies and practices in the footer, so displaying the trustmark here is a great way to make sure those shoppers can find helpful information about the site’s reputation. We also recommend adding this trustmark to product pages–it’s a great way to complement more traditional reviews services like Trustpilot or ResellerRatings.

As mentioned earlier, the testimonials trustmark is another great way for sites to show visitors that they consistently deliver outstanding service. The trustmark displays the site’s Issue-Free Orders rate along with testimonials from customers that the site owner has approved. Because nearly half of consumers have concerns about order fulfillment when reviewing their shopping cart, that’s one location where we highly recommend placing the testimonials trustmark. We also suggest placing it on the homepage among other information about the business.

Finally, the banner trustmark is another option to display the site’s Issue-Free Orders rate. The trustmark displays multiple certifications a site has earned, so that more than one visitor concern can be addressed on the page where it is displayed. It’s useful to include this trustmark on checkout pages and also the shopping cart page if the testimonials trustmark isn’t being used there.

Sites should keep in mind that if their Issue-Free Orders rate falls below 95%, the Issue-Free Orders trustmark and testimonials trustmark will not appear on the site. In addition, the banner trustmark will not display the Issue-Free Orders rate if it’s below 95%, however it will continue to display other certifications the site has earned.

Sites using Issue-Free Orders will also have their rate and testimonials displayed on their certification modal and page so that visitors can see all the site’s earned certifications compiled in one place.

Issue-Free Orders enables sites to be more transparent with their visitors in a way that goes a step beyond traditional reviews. Through the words of previous customers, visitors can see for themselves what it’s like to deal with the business, helping to build trust and encourage more purchases.

Learn how sites can build trust even further with TrustedSite in our Certifications Explained blog series.