If you're an e-commerce owner, you know that increasing sales can be a constant challenge.
When it comes to boosting e-commerce sales, nothing is more powerful than guaranteeing your products and services. Guarantees can help increase confidence and trust among potential buyers.
By adding guarantees to your online store, you can reassure customers that they're making a smart purchase and that you stand behind the quality of what you offer.
In this blog post, we'll discuss the benefits of using guarantees on your e-commerce site, and we'll offer tips for setting up effective guarantees that will encourage buyers to make a purchase.
So if you're looking for ways to boost your e-commerce business, read on!
What are product guarantees and how do they work
So what exactly are product guarantees?
You should think of them as a spoken contract between you and your customer and it has two parts. One is you, showcasing the quality of your product or service, and the other is an agreement to amend any issues, problems, or unexpected situations for the duration of the said guarantee.
That means if anything goes wrong, your customer will get a free repair, a replacement product, or a refund in most cases. And you are using this information as an incentive for people to buy your product or service.
The benefits of offering product guarantees to online shoppers
If you are searching for a way to build trust with your customers, while at the same time improving their overall shopping experience, then you should probably think about using a satisfaction guarantee.
This is a powerful way to tackle your customers perceived risks because, with online shopping, there is always a risk for them. They cannot experience the products they are seeing, and because of that, it is crucial to build trust with them and showcase your reputation. People don’t want to make a purchase that they could regret later on. With smart and strategic use of a guarantee, you can assure them that they can trust you with their money and with their data.
Whatever type of guarantee you are thinking of using, with them you are demonstrating your belief in the quality of the products or service you are offering. They are helping people to relax and provide them with enough comfort because they are shifting all the risk from them to you. So if you are about to offer some kind of product or service guarantee, here are the main benefits you will get from that:
- It will differentiate you from other companies on the market, making you rise up between your competitors
- You will receive increased trust from both first-time buyers and repeated customers
- It will reduce or completely remove the risk from the people, making it easier for them to ”try” your product and experience it in full
Use product guarantee to reduce returns and increase customer loyalty
By offering an unconditional guarantee, you can actually reduce your refunds. Sounds crazy right?
Although it may seem counter-intuitive, bear with me. One thing that helps reduce the refunds is to make them so easy to get.
Why is that? It is because of the first-time buyers.
What they are looking for is a company with a great reputation, a high-quality product or service, and a reassurance that if anything goes wrong you have them covered. And how do you achieve that? You guessed it, by clearly and explicitly explaining how are you backing up your product or service, and having it shown and stated upfront.
But what happens if your product or service fails?
Most people are very real and they understand that sometimes things can go wrong. Nobody and nothing is perfect. But these are the situations where you show them what you and your business are made of.
When the situation arises where a customer has an issue with your product or service, you should use this chance to strengthen the relationship with that customer, justify the trust they had given you, and smoothly solve the situation at hand as you explained in your guarantee you would.
With this type of behavior, focused on complete customer satisfaction, accompanied by asking for a review from that customer, you accomplish two things:
- You create a loyal customer, that will also become your promotor in most cases.
- You showcase your reputation with that review, showing new customers that your guarantee is not just a written word - it is actually backed by your behavior and user experience.
How to create a product guarantee that will boost your e-commerce sales
By now you should be able to easily see how using guarantees could easily 2x your sales.
But how to actually create it?
Here are a couple of guarantee types:
Unconditional guarantee (X time)
- Satisfaction guarantee: If you are not completely satisfied…
- No questions asked guarantee: …just email us and we will refund you, no questions asked.
These types of guarantees you can only make when you are completely confident in your product or service. When you know that what you are offering is the real deal, and you are certain that your customers will benefit hugely from it, you can back up your product or service with any or both of these.
If you are using a service or some kind of digital product, when using an unconditional guarantee, you need to be smart and put/give some of your high-value stuff after that period of guarantee so that a person can look forward to receiving it and stay.
Conditional guarantee
“If you don’t achieve X in Y time, we will…”
- Outsized refund: We will pay you 2x or 3x the amount you spent…
- Service guarantee: …we will work with you for free until you achieve X as long as you did XYZ beforehand.
- Credit-based guarantee: We will give you 100% of the money you spent toward any other product or service that we provide.
- Personal service guarantee: …I will personally work with you 1-1 until you achieve X.
- Wage payment guarantee: We will pay you for your hours spent based on your hourly wage.
- Release of service guarantee: This nullifies the contract and any future payments they need to do toward you.
Performance / value-based guarantee
You should only use this one with highly qualified prospects because this type of guarantee works like this: “If the outcome is not achieved they owe you nothing!”
Now, you need to find the best possible guarantee that suits your product or service. Do not worry if you think more than one type can be applied, because you can also stack your guarantees for better performance if you’d like.
Once you have chosen the types, you need to figure out and calculate your guarantee variables. There is no exact formula since it depends on a lot of factors around your business and product, or service. These are time periods, amount of money back, conditions on whether a person can use the guarantee, etc.
Lastly, you need to write the name of your guarantee. And the more spicy the name is, the better. You want to avoid the general names like “30 day money-back guarantee”. This can be found on almost every website on the internet, and it’s not working - because it is so general, people are perceiving them as not trustworthy enough.
To help you understand what I mean by that, here is an example:
Generic: “30 day money-back satisfaction guarantee” (BAD)
#1: In 30 days, if you wouldn’t jump into shark-infested waters to get our product back, we will return every dollar you paid. LOVE IT or LEAVE it! (GOOD)
#2: You will get our famous “club a baby seal guarantee”. After 30 days of using our services, if you wouldn’t club a baby seal to stay on as a customer, you don’t have to pay a penny! (BEST)
In the end, a piece of advice. If you ever thought about hiring a copywriter, now is the time ;)
SUMMARY
Product guarantees are a tried and true marketing technique that can be used to boost your e-commerce sales and build customer loyalty. Offering customers assurances about their purchases will make them more likely to buy from you, reducing the chance of returns or negative feedback on your product pages.
We know that a product guarantee can be the deciding factor for an online shopper. As you’ve learned, there are many different types of guarantees out there and they all work differently to solve customer problems in different ways. Whether you offer a money-back guarantee, warranty, or some other type of product protection plan, it is important to understand that customers will often value these guarantees more than the actual products.
The bottom line is this - if your customers trust you enough with their purchase decision, then they will likely trust your solution too!
Which types of product guarantees have been most successful for your company?
If this sounds like something your business could benefit from and you need help with writing or setting up your guarantees, we’re happy to provide guidance at any point in the process.
