upBuilding customers’ confidence in osCommerce - part I
Once a customer reaches the web site, there are many reasons to buy or not to buy products. Product price is one of the most important factors of course, but yet many other factors affect customer’s decision.
The customer has certain needs when opens the online store web site. Hence one of the most important factors affecting purchase decision is customer’s confidence in the fact that the product will address customer’s needs now and in the future.
Another very important factor is customer’s readiness to buy online in general, and buying products online from certain web site in particular.
In order to convince customers to buy products online, store has to first buy their confidence.
Comparing online and off-line buying processes its easy to see why customer’s confidence is one of the key factors:
- when buying offline the customer can see, touch, often try the product
- when buying offline the customer can ask for an advise of the store staff
- when buying offline the customer deals with a real existing store, which was standing at its place for a while and is supposed to stay there for a while too
- when buying offline the customer can return the product at any moment accordingly to the consumer regulations that act in that country or territory
- when buying offline the customer can pay in cash, or using cards, checks, etc – and money goes from hands to hands without much risk
Having listed all those benefits of buying offline we understand how important is to assure customers of offline stores that buying products online is secure, easy, fast, and safe method of purchase.
Providing customers of online stores with information that helps build their confidence is an important task of each online store manager. Without that information many customers would simply skip buying products on a particular site and will either place an order with competitors, or buy products from their local store or supermarket.
Default osCommerce installation allows for editing information about products and the online store in general. Product information (like product name, description, image, price, etc) is edited in the Administration panel of osCommerce. Information about the online store, and various policies can be edited in language files. Language files can be either edited in a text editor, or using the Define Language tool under the Tools menu.