Being highly successful as an Amazon seller essential comes down to two things: getting traffic to your listings, and getting users to buy your products once they arrive. One of the best, not to mention underutilised tactics for making sure your visitors actually buy your product is to establish strong trust signals.
The number one thing you can do to get more users to your listings is to rank highly in Amazon search results, which is where Amazon SEO comes in. For more on how to rank on Amazon, check my Amazon SEO guide. In this article, however, we will focus on the second part of the equation: conversion to sales.
One of the best, not to mention underutilised tactics for making sure your visitors actually buy your product is to establish strong trust signals. So what exactly are trust signals and how can you use them to sell more products on Amazon? Let’s dive in.
What are Trust Signals and Why are They Important?
Trust signals are essentially the signs and aspects that tell potential customers that they can trust in the value and quality of your product. This is important for all types of sales, because it is one of the main factors which can make the difference between someone buying your product or not. Trust signals are especially important in ecommerce because in this virtual environment customers cannot see, touch and feel the product, and therefore look for extra signals that they can believe in the product.
Having strong trust signals in place means that customers will be more likely to purchase your product, and less likely to abandon their cart before completing the transaction. This, of course, means more sales, more revenue, and more business growth.
How Apply Trust Signals to Amazon
In ecommerce, and specifically when selling on Amazon, there are a number of ways you can send trust signals to your potential customers. The top three are arguably reviews, authority, and press mentions.
1) Get great reviews
Reviews are one of the biggest, if not the biggest, trust signals on Amazon. Users use reviews to judge the quality of a product, and decide whether to buy it. Your reviews can even influence whether users click on your listing when it comes up in their search results, or see it at all. Products which are highly rated by customers get a higher star rating on Amazon which will attract more click-throughs, and will also rank higher on Amazon.
It is important to be proactive in getting positive reviews for your listings. The primary way to get great reviews is to have a great product and deliver it with excellent service. Having said that however, satisfied customers don’t always leave reviews. This is where the proactive part comes in: send your customers not one but two reminders to leave a review. You can also offer free samples to customers to build reviews while your launching a product or your store.
2) Establish authority through Quora
Another very effective way to set up persuasive trust signals is through establishing your authority on subjects related to the products you sell. When your potential customers see that you are an expert on the subject, they’ll be encourage to buy your products. There are a few different ways you can do this – through having a well-written blog, guest posting on other sites, or interacting with users on Facebook and LinkedIn. However, arguably the least time and capital intensive method is establishing your authority on Quora.
The question and answer site has become increasingly popular in recent years. Not only that, but it has established itself as a reliable source of information from experts. A big part of this is the fact that users have profiles which they can populate with their qualifications and experience, and so back up their authority to answer certain questions. You can establish your authority by expertly answering questions on Quora, which sends trust signals to other users. Not just any users too, but those who are researching the kind of products you sell. The user may then look up your profile, see the link to your Amazon store, and may very well decide to buy one of your products.
3) Get press mentions
The third great way to establish trust signals that will drive more sales on Amazon is through the media. Consumers still put a lot of trust in what they read in publications, whether traditional papers or magazines or reputable online sites and blogs. Getting your product or your business mentioned by one of these sources instantly establishes a great deal of credibility and trust.
In order to get press mentions that will help you to sell more products, you need to put some time into digital PR. This is not as simple as just sending a few press releases out and waiting for the mentions to come flooding in. PR is all about relationships: look up media contacts in your industry, build relationships with them over time, and then when you have a new product you can reach out to them for a mention. Or even better, they will come to you for quotes and product ideas.
