To all our ecommerce friends, congratulations on making it through another year! Hopefully you continued to weather the pandemic storm and achieved many of your business goals over the last year.

As your holiday season campaigns wrap up, it’s time to start looking ahead to the new year. In the first few weeks of the year, it’s important to seize the opportunity to continue developing relationships with your new customers who made a purchase during the holiday season.

Of course, we at TrustedSite believe that the best way to get those customers coming back for more in the new year is to build a foundation of trust. When customers have trust in your business, not only are they more likely to make repeat purchases, but they’re also more likely to become brand advocates, helping you reach even more new customers.

If building trust isn’t already incorporated into your business plan, it’s time to set some new year’s resolutions. To give you some inspiration, we’ve put together this list of resolutions that are easy to accomplish but go a long way when it comes to earning customer trust. Whether you implement just one of these resolutions or all six, you’re sure to start the new year off strong.

5 New Year’s resolutions to help you build trust with customers

Make customers feel special with exclusive SMS offers

Consumers love to save money. So much so that almost 90% of consumers used coupons in 2020. Because of their popularity, deals and discounts have become a deeply ingrained expectation of online shoppers. If you’re not offering a deal, there’s good chance consumers will find one somewhere else.

But of course that catch is that if you offer discounts without careful strategy you’re going to miss out on some profit. That’s what makes exclusive SMS discount programs the perfect solution. You get to offer a discount to only the most loyal customers, and your customers get to feel like insiders that have access to the best deals.

Cartloop is a conversational SMS marketing app available on Shopify that can help increase conversions up to 3 times better than one-way messages. Not only is Cartloop great for creating exclusive coupon codes that can help bring customers back to your store, but you can also use it to help customers navigate common questions. With that extra personal care and attention, customers will build confidence and trust in your brand.

Create an all-star customer support team

While we're on the topic of personal care and attention, let’s talk more about customer support. Did you know that 93% of customer service teams agree that today’s customers have higher expectations than ever before? That means you need to bring your A-game to each and every customer interaction.

But with customer communication happening on so many channels today, from live chat to social media to reviews sites, it can feel like you’re fighting a war on multiple fronts. Thankfully, there are tools like Gorgias that empower your customer service team to be the best they can be by providing a single hub to manage customer communication across channels.

And since customer history can be imported into the platform, your team will have access to all the information they need so they can spend less time asking questions and more time answering questions. With more personalized support experiences, customers are more likely to associate your brand as one that truly cares about them.

Incorporate trust into the entire customer journey

Even if you have a superstar support team, keep in mind that many customers prefer to be self-sufficient. Those customers will opt to skip the interaction and form an opinion about your brand from a purely visual standpoint. Because customers may enter your site on a number of different pages, you need to ensure that trust is built into every page to make a good impression.

One way to do this is with TrustedSite’s system of trustmarks which was specifically designed to be displayed throughout the entire conversion funnel. Each of the trustmarks addresses common visitor concerns, from business legitimacy to data security. When placed throughout the customer journey, the trustmarks help to reassure customers as concerns arise, and encourage them to move forward until they have completed a purchase.

Sites are able to display the TrustedSite trustmarks for each of the certifications they earn. TrustedSite offers 10 certifications including Certified Secure, Verified Business, and Issue-Free Orders, which are earned by meeting a set of requirements. By showing customers that your site has earned certifications from a third-party, you can build a stronger sense of trust that your business is legitimate and safe.

Use insights from customer reviews to improve your business

Leveraging the words of your satisfied previous customers is one of the best ways to show new customers that your shop is one they should do business with. But it’s not enough to simply collect reviews and display them on your site. It’s important to respond to both positive and negative feedback to demonstrate responsiveness and show that you really care about your customers’ experiences.

Set a New Year’s resolution to go a step further and integrate customer feedback from your reviews into your business development plans. Trustpilot makes it really easy to leverage data from your reviews with its Review Insights tool. This tool helps you identify trending customer sentiments in your reviews so you can get perspective on what you’re doing well and what could be improved. You can then take those insights and create a plan to improve things that will actually make a meaningful impact on the customer experience.

Start a loyalty program

Loyalty programs are another great way to grow trust with customers by rewarding them for shopping with you. By awarding them points that they can use to score discounts or other rewards, customers are more incentivized to stay with your brand for things they might need in the future.

Growave is a loyalty app that provides an all-in-one rewards program solution and is Shopify compatible. A great place to start your program is by sending customers a post-holiday “thank you” email that includes their earned points balance and shows how close they are to their next tier or reward. Also, make sure to advertise your rewards program on your site so that prospective customers know that making a purchase can help them earn discounts in the future.

Wrapping up

We hope this has helped spark some ideas for how to start your year off strong. With a little bit of planning and strategy, your business will be poised to successfully accomplish your New Year’s resolutions!