How Startups Can Creatively Signal Trust in Their Product Messaging

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When was the last time an ecommerce brand showed you how many zip codes they have shipped their products to? Did this make you trust them more? Startups often focus on typical trust signals, such as customer reviews and security badges (SSL certificates), to convey to potential customers that they can be trusted — but in a crowded market, this alone won’t suffice.

Customers have tons of options today, and startups should leverage creative messaging to signal trust.

Why creativity in trust-building matters

Online shoppers have come to expect the usual trust badges and repetitive promises of free returns or fast shipping. In such an environment, standing out and making customers trust you is not just about communicating something different; it’s about offering something genuine that sparks curiosity.

You are likely competing with established brands in your space. They wouldn’t have to do such imaginative things, but you must in order to not only grab attention but to plant the seeds of confidence. This is where creative tactics will help you shine and tap into the emotional aspects of consumer decision-making.

Often, startups invest heavily in advertising and drawing traffic to their home pages but fail to convert a significant portion of that traffic. A big contributing factor to this is a lack of trust in an otherwise unknown startup. Convincing customers that they can be trusted is, thus, not only important to generate revenue but also to make sure that advertising budgets are not wasted.

Uncommon trust signals you can leverage

1. A big number associated with your customers/products:

If you are a startup that has sold to a significant number of customers, do not hesitate to publicly disclose this figure. It’s the most important thing you could display. When I joined a fashion ecommerce startup as head of growth, I realized that the company’s website had a high bounce rate (i.e., a substantial portion of our customers would visit our home page but never view any other page beyond the home page). Our social media ads were terrific, but this bounce rate meant that our return on advertising spend was very low.

I quickly realized that this was due to a lack of trust. Sure, we displayed our extremely favorable Facebook and Google reviews, but so did all our competitors. What made us stand out is very few fashion startups in India can claim to have served 100,000 customers. That’s a big number and a huge flex — if so many people have trusted us, why can’t a new prospective customer? We had also shipped our product to over 3,500 towns. We changed our home page design and product messaging to put these statistics front and center. Lo and behold, our bounce rate dropped significantly.

Perhaps you haven’t yet sold to 100,000 customers and consequently don’t want to display the number of customers. You can be more creative in such cases and focus on, perhaps, the number of units you have sold; this can be interesting if each product you sell comes with multiple units. For instance, if you sell pairs of socks that come in packs of five, then instead of counting 20,000 orders, you can signal that you have put 100,000 actual pairs of socks on people’s feet. If you sell a liquid product, maybe the volume sold is more interesting than the number of customers. Your creativity is your best friend in this context.

2. Real-time statistics

Showing real-time statistics (like the number of customers who have viewed a website) is more common; however, you can still leverage this principle of showing real-time data with more creative numbers. Maybe you’re a coffee roaster who has sold 2,437 bags this month — why not show this in real-time on your product pages? This will help customers see active engagement, reinforcing that your business is active, thriving and in demand.

Another metric you can utilize in such a context is a zip code tracker. This will help illustrate the breadth of your operations. The cherry on top would be a small map or a list showing each location you have shipped to, helping serve as a vivid indicator of your reach. This will not only help spark curiosity (“Hey, someone from my town has bought this item!”) but also suggests others are trusting your brand enough to place orders.

Integrate trust signals into product messaging

Once you have identified the specific metrics that will help your customers trust your brand and product, you should leverage these metrics across multiple surfaces and customer touchpoints. Your product pages should be first and foremost. You could have a rotating banner with the last few zip codes or towns you shipped to or an interactive infographic that updates regularly with total sales or production metrics.

Besides product pages, a few other critical touchpoints are checkout pages, post-purchase pages/emails and your newsletters. Take every opportunity to highlight your key trust metrics. An example of an engaging order confirmation email could be, “Thank you for trusting us — this month, we have already delivered 5,000 orders on schedule!”

Pitfalls and best practices

Firstly, it is important that you do not fabricate any statistics. This is a surefire way to ruin your reputation if discovered. This will also not help you build the right culture amongst your employees.

Another aspect to remember is to not overload your customers with too many statistics. Be clear about the one or two key figures that you feel will move the needle and only publicize those.

Lastly, if possible, communicate these trust signals with humor, but don’t undermine your credibility with overly gimmicky tactics.