How Online Businesses Can Demonstrate That They’re Trustworthy

Online businesses have to work extremely hard to demonstrate to their customers that they can be trusted.  

Most online niches have many competitors, so they need to give customers a reason to believe they’ll get the service they expect. If their customers have any reservations then they’ll take their business elsewhere. 

To help you learn how online businesses demonstrate trustworthiness, we’ve looked at two industries that really have to put the effort in to earn the trust of their customers, explaining what they do and their reasons for doing so. 

Online casinos: using regulatory icons

Online casinos are sites that feature gambling games and sports betting options. 

Trust is vital to these online businesses because they hold very sensitive information about their customers. Ecommerce businesses require customers to provide their bank details to buy the products they want and the same is true of gambling sites. 

People give over their bank details to these companies so that they can add money to their casino accounts, meaning that their financial details are held for as long as their account remains open. 

But gambling sites go further than ecommerce businesses. How? By requesting photo ID and proof of address.  

This means the people who use online casinos have an even higher trust expectation than most normal customers and demand even more from gambling sites than they do from other businesses. 

Online casinos earn the trust of their players by highlighting the regulatory icons of gambling on their websites. 

National regulators are the key icons to look for when using the best online casinos. These include the UK Gambling Commission, Gibraltar Betting and Gaming Association (GBGA), and Spelinspektionen. 

Checking what casino reviews sites say about gambling sites trustworthiness can give you peace of mind when deciding which ones to give your sensitive information to. 

Specialist sites like OnlineCasinos look for the regulatory icons on gambling sites and are obliged to provide accurate information about the casinos they review, as they are also subject to industry regulations. 

So, if you want to be certain you can trust an online casino, look for the regulatory icons on the website and check to see what’s said about them by reviews sites. 

Beauty brands: focussing on real people and real feelings

Beauty brands sell a wide selection of items, from pore cleansers to makeup. 

Trust is vital because these products deal with customers’ perceptions of themselves, of who they are and who they aspire to be. 

This not only touches on a physical vision of self but also people’s mental health — people buy personal care products to look the way they want to and feel good about themselves. This means the brands that sell these items need to present themselves sincerely. 

Dove is a great example of a brand that gets this right. 

Dove is broadly an offline brand — though, you can buy its products from digital marketplaces — but it has an important online presence and offers lessons on trust that are appropriate for any business, digital or bricks and mortar. 

Unlike many companies in the industry that focus on idealised visions of self, Dove shows how its products relate to real people (not Karlie Kloss). 

The 2004 Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is one of the most famous examples of a beauty brand inspiring trust by focussing on genuine people. 

Customers could see themselves in the people advertising Dove’s products and trusted that the brand’s products would help them to be the person they wanted to be, rather than being told who to be. 

Dove was the first beauty brand to take this approach and it inspired enough trust for sales to increase by 700%.

It’s continued its focus on real beauty, with its website and social media accounts testament to the strategy it began in 2004. 

Intermediary sites: showcasing user reviews

Intermediary sites bring together customers and private individuals offering services. They cover a range of industries, from transport (Uber) to accommodation (Airbnb). 

Trust is extremely important to these online businesses because they entrust people they don’t employ to look after their brand. 

This creates operational problems for intermediary sites because they don’t have the same checks and balances that are available to businesses with traditional employees. 

These companies tackle this issue by employing user reviews to demonstrate that these private individuals can be trusted to provide the service their customers demand. 

Intermediary sites like Airbnb make it extremely simple for their customers to decide how trustworthy their third party renters are. They do this by encouraging people to leave comments and give the landlords a star rating. 

The reason they do this is that customers trust reviews from their peers almost as much as advice given by their families. The reason for this is their peers have no vested interest in the outcome of a review, unlike companies. 

Using this approach encourages renters on Airbnb or taxi drivers on intermediary sites to deliver a good service. Why? Because customers will choose to use another individual if they have a poor rating or negative comments to their name. 

So, if you wish to know if you can trust you’ll get a good service from private individuals on intermediary sites then read what your fellow customers are saying. 

Online casinos and intermediary sites are two types of online business that have to work really hard to demonstrate they’re trustworthy. 

For the former, it’s because they request highly sensitive information to allow people to play card games and bet on sporting events. 

For the latter it’s because they don’t employ the people who deliver the service paid for by their customers.

But even with the policies they have in place, trust can be lost in an instant. It takes just one person to use social media to share their concerns about these companies to dent a brand that’s worked for years to earn people’s confidence.

That’s why both online casinos and intermediary sites constantly review and update the steps they take to show they’re trustworthy. 

So, next time you use an online casino or intermediary site, look more closely at their gambling icons and customer reviews. Alternatively, if you can’t see an up-to-date icon or recent review then you should ask yourself if the business is really working hard enough to gain your trust.