What is the Trusted Shops Community of Trust?

Do you also want access to 45 million shoppers in Europe? Do you also want to increase your conversion rate and average order value? Of course you do! One of the best ways to achieve this is through trust; through the Community of Trust. In this article, we explain what the Community of Trust is, how you and your customers can benefit from it, and how you can become a member shop.

Where can I find the Community of Trust?

Since 1999, Trusted Shops has been working to build online trust through the Community of Trust, which continues to grow rapidly. Within the Community, we connect over 45 million shoppers looking for reliable shops with more than 32,000 trusted online stores across Europe.

From the moment shoppers search for products online to when their order arrives (and even beyond), Trusted Shops is there. The Community of Trust is the complete trust package, from start to finish, throughout the customer journey.

How does the Community of Trust work?

When your shop joins the Community of Trust, you begin collecting real, authentic reviews; the currency of trust. But this currency needs value.

First, you earn this by collecting enough reviews, building a good review score, and offering good products and high-quality service. Once you meet these requirements along with our quality standards, you can earn the Trusted Shops Trustmark®, the sixth star. Remember, you earn the Trustmark because you can't buy trust.

Once you've earned the Trustmark, you gain access to over 45 million shoppers in Europe. Because you're trusted and demonstrate this, Trusted Shops offers all your customers the 30-day Buyer Protection. This eliminates any doubts they may have, improving your conversion rate.

More than 1 million orders are placed every day in the Community of Trust, connecting shoppers with trusted online stores, from small to large.

You’ll not only offer a safe buying experience, but also an environment where customers feel safe and valued.

What does the customer journey look like in the Community of Trust?

There's a lot going on these days: fake shops, scams, A.I. that can't distinguish you from the real thing. Every day, customers ask themselves: Who can I trust?

All the uncertainty influences our behaviour as shoppers. That's why customers shop in the Community of Trust.

Search engines

The customer journey often begins with Google. That's where shoppers discover your online store: through organic search results (SEO), Google Shopping, or Google Ads (SEA). It's a combination of your images, prices, and star ratings that catches the eye of online shoppers.

As a Google partner, Trusted Shops can forward these star ratings to the platform, allowing you to show them where it matters. Google Integration transforms visibility into trustworthiness.

Source: Hatstore

In your online shop

As soon as they click on your website, they immediately see the Trustbadge® displaying your shop rating, the Trustmark and the Buyer Protection. This shows them within 2 seconds that they can trust your shop.

This Trustbadge makes a big difference in why the Community attracts more new customers: we don't lead shoppers away from your site. They can see this trust throughout their entire customer journey.

They click the Trustbadge and see the reviews left by other customers. This is important because research by Trusted Shops shows that social proof leads to first purchases. Two out of three shoppers consider positive reviews important, often more important than price. Almost 80% of European shoppers usually or always read reviews before placing an order.

Once shoppers find the product they're looking for, they'll see product reviews on the product page. This reassures them that the product is high quality and that it’s truly what you claim.

Source: Wilton Wholefoods

Shoppers will buy from you because they understand the three pillars of the Community: real reviews, genuine quality, and 100% trust. They trust your online shop because of the Trustmark certification, but also because of the Buyer Protection, knowing their money is safe.

After the purchase

Shutterstock/Prostock-studio

After receiving their order, Trusted Shops automatically sends an email with a review request at the perfect time. This way, you’ll remind satisfied customers to leave a review. They can easily complete the review on any device.

Trusted Shops research shows that 62% of customers leave reviews to help other people in the community make informed decisions. Help turn your happy customers into advocates for your brand and your products.

Once they leave a review, the cycle starts again, like a perfect ecosystem where new reviews attract new customers through Google and convert them through trust.

The result: better conversions and higher order values.

For example, consider our customer PrintAbout: their A/B testing shows an average 4.35% higher conversion rate when the Trustbadge is displayed. At SB Supply, they even see that order values for PLUS members of the Community of Trust are 51% higher than average.

That's why trust is the best selling point of your online shop.

How does your online shop become a member of the Community of Trust?

Trust us

If you want to start earning your customers' trust, you have to trust us first, of course.

The 32,000 online stores and 45 million shoppers who already trust us send a clear message, but we can also back it up. We have a diverse range of customer stories and A/B tests in various markets, which demonstrate the impact with statistics. Trust our customers' experiences.

Talk to our experts

The next step is to talk to our experts about your online shop’s needs and challenges. They'll provide tailored advice so your business can thrive and grow. Therefore, it's in our best interest to immediately schedule a personalised and fully supported onboarding process to get you off to a flying start.

Onboarding

The main reason we achieve such strong results is that we assign a Customer Success Manager to every member shop. They'll schedule a meeting to walk you through the backend and show you all the possibilities within the Community of Trust.

This way, you know exactly what is possible and you can immediately start earning the currency we talked about earlier: the reviews.

To collect reviews, we offer excellent and easy integration with various e-commerce platforms or through our API. We want you to use our products in a way that best suits your online shop.

What about the Trustmark & Buyer Protection?

Once you've collected enough reviews and demonstrated excellent service, products, and overall quality, we'll use a certification process to assess whether your online store meets our quality criteria.

Don't worry, you don't have to pass on the first try! Our Certification Team works closely with you to advise you on how to earn the Trustmark.

If you meet all the requirements, we'll reward your online shop with the Trusted Shops Trustmark, so you can offer the Buyer Protection to your customers. This gives you access to 45 million shoppers across Europe.

Recommended reading:
The Trusted Shops Trustmark: How the Certification Process Works

I'm a member of the Community of Trust... now what?

You're now getting more visitors to your website, your conversion rate has improved, and your average order value has increased. And it's been a few months now... what’s next?

We think long-term. We don't just want you to grow in the first few weeks or months, but also in the years to come. You might even expand into new markets. We'll help you with that. Together, we'll develop a short-term and long-term success plan based on your needs, challenges, and growth potential.

For example, these features (click on the names to go to the product page):

Product reviews: Product reviews are a vital addition, as they demonstrate not only the quality of your service but also your products. These reviews have been proven to reduce returns, as customers know what to expect before completing the purchase.

Smart Review Assistant: Responding to negative reviews is important, but also time-consuming. We support you with a specialised AI solution. This not only shortens the time it takes to respond to negative reviews, but also makes it possible to respond to satisfied customers.

Sentiment Analysis: Collecting a lot of reviews is great, but it can be quite a challenge to translate all that data into a thorough analysis of what's going well, what could be improved, and what needs immediate attention. Sentiment Analysis provides instant insights of your reviews in a single overview, allowing you to delve deeper into the data and act accordingly.

Google Integration: Because Trusted Shops is a Google partner, we can automatically send the reviews you collect to the platform, allowing you to showcase them in your Google Shopping and Google Ads. This way, you'll attract new customers from the very first search.

Reputation Manager: Your reputation matters. Not just through the Trusted Shops platform, but everywhere online. Paying for all those platforms is quite expensive, and how do you ensure that your review requests reach those other platforms as well? That's where the Reputation Manager comes in: From a single dashboard, you can manage multiple review platforms and automatically send review requests to ensure a consistent online reputation.

Conclusion

The Community of Trust isn't just one thing, but a complete package of trust. From the initial search to the checkout to leaving a review, the Community brings trust to a world that needs it.

We hope you're as excited about our possibilities as we are, and we look forward to welcoming you to the Community of Trust soon!

And if you're already a member, we hope these goals are helpful. If you have any ideas for further growth, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Contact our experts:

This article was originally published on our Dutch blog: Wat is de Community of Trust van Trusted Shops?