This week's CEO, Chuck Davis of BizRate, says it best, "Right now the Internet is a giant black hole for many consumers." Often, those who visit or could visit your website have no idea who you are – and that's hardly confidence inspiring. The net credibility gap is the reason why businesses like BizRate have sprung up. BizRate surveys businesses and customers and provides ratings for merchant sites. But even if your outfit hasn't yet gotten a BizRate or other rating, you can apply what's been learned from surveyed customers. Small businesses usually can't offer the low prices or brand name recognition of big businesses. If you want to make a name for your company, you'll have to provide something different. Something that bridges that credibility gap. Something good enough to make customers choose you over more established brands. Here are Chuck Davis' tips on providing your customers with 5-star ecommerce service.

Make it Easy to Shop

We've said it before and BizRate's surveys confirm it – when businesses put up barriers to buying, they lose customers. "There's an odd thing about the way people order online," Davis says. "Something like two-thirds of all shopping baskets are never uploaded. People load items into a shopping basket and then get spooked—maybe from shipping rate sticker shock. For ease of use, the transaction has to be really simple with no hidden costs." Let customers know up front what charges will be incurred with any order, or you'll lose customers. One-click shopping is also a must – don't make customers fill out the same information more than once. "An important aspect of ordering online is the convenience of the wallet factor. Folks like shopping on Amazon because Amazon remembers all your information, and they have one-click ordering," Davis says.

Faster is Better

Make pages easy to load and invest in up to the minute server technology. "If your pages load slowly, customers are quickly turned off," says Davis. "During the holiday season, our research found that if a website was slow, consumers said, 'If this site can't handle loading pages, what does that tell me about their fulfillment operations, their customer service and my chances of actually getting this item?' That was one of the main categories for site abandonment in the fourth quarter. If they had no confidence in the site itself, why would someone even think about buying later on?" Davis says.

Customer Service and Timeliness

The smaller you are, the less likely it is you can compete with bigger businesses on price. Pour your energy into customer service instead. Make sure any customer complaints are handled promptly and decisively, and ensure orders go out on time. "I think price is over played in the media and with consumers," Davis says. "Price bots are everywhere. At BizRate we firmly believe that price is just one of many measures. In rating the merchants, we measure ten different items in our report cards. You don't want to save $10 on a computer if it's going to take you ninety days to get it." You wouldn't want to wait and neither do your customers. "We have a lot of 4-star or 4.5-star sites, but when you dig into the details of the ten measures we look at, a site may have a 2.5- or 3- star rating for on-time delivery," Davis says. "When I shop, I look at two of the ten quality ratings: on-time delivery and customer support. That shows me what's under the sheets—whether the site can provide the item in a timely fashion and take it back from me if I don't like it."

Convenience and Fulfillment

Finally, a 5-star merchant makes sure that all customer orders are fulfilled flawlessly. As we mentioned before, on-time delivery is crucial – but so are a few other factors. "We find that how a merchant does on the fulfillment breeds the most loyalty. Was the product represented properly? Did you get what you bought online? It might look one way and be packaged another way. What you thought was a compact camera was actually a big, clunky thing," Davis says. There are many facets to 5-star customer service. We've touched on a few that are relatively easy to fix and utterly vital. Don't give big businesses yet another advantage – give your customers 5-star ecommerce and they'll be back.