Google has posted a new document in the Google Merchant Center area on how to build trust with your customers. The document goes through your business identity, your transparency, your online reputation, and your professional design.
Google explained, that it wants "Google to be a safe and trustworthy place for both our customers and retailers. Customers should feel confident about the offers they are browsing and the businesses they are purchasing from. Sometimes it can take some time before a sufficient level of trust is established and before we consider it safe to display your offers to customers. This assessment is an ongoing process and since we know that customers are likely to do research about your products and business, we may review multiple signals from across the web. The more we know about your business, the better we are able to represent you."
Here is that list of what Google said customers value in building trust with your business:
- Business Identity:
- Provide the official business name that you use across the web and avoid any mismatches in your registered business name and domain name.
- Include an “about us” page on your website to show your authenticity and tell customers your unique story.
- Let customers know that they can follow you on social media profiles and link to those pages from your website.
- Transparency:
- Be clear and provide detailed information about your policies including shipping, returns and privacy policies.
- Be transparent about your business model and how you operate.
- Online reputation:
- Help potential customers understand how to use your products or how other customers have used them. Show reviews and testimonials about your products and business.
- If you’ve received any badges or seals of approval from official third-party sources, make sure that you mention these.
- Clearly communicate how customers can interact with you by making sure they know how to get in touch with you and how your customer support is set-up.
- If you publish a blog post or if your business was mentioned in an article, make sure your customers know about this.
- Professional design:
- Install an SSL certificate so customers know that their sensitive data is retrieved and stored securely without being intercepted by hackers.
- Your website should be accessible for all customers, easy to navigate, and shouldn’t contain any unnecessary redirects or redirects to broken links.
- Avoid placeholders for text and images; this gives the feeling that the website is unfinished.
So there you have it, your blueprint from Google on how you can get your customers to trust you. :)
But how does Google know if your customers trust you? Google put down this list of how you can help Google learn more about your business:
- Provide information in the Business information settings in Merchant Center.
- Link the relevant third-party platforms to Merchant Center.
- Create and verify a Google Business Profile.
- Follow our SEO guidelines to improve the visibility of your website on Google and to provide a good customer experience.
- Improve your eligibility for seller ratings, by opting into Google Customer Reviews or other third-party review services.
- Match your product data in your product feed with your website to ensure customers see the same information, such as prices, across both.
Honestly, I found this announcement a bit out of character from the other announcements on that page.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
