The daily deal industry leader, Groupon (or at least its Chinese subsidiary), was recently accused of offering a fake McDonald’s deal, through which it sold more than 800 vouchers that McDonald’s said that it never agreed to fulfill. When even the biggest player in the space engages in fraudulent behavior, one has to wonder if consumers are beginning to distrust daily deal websites in general. After all, is there really a way to verify if the deal is real – and, if it is, is it worth it taking the risk that the voucher cannot or will not be used in the future (for whatever reason) by pre-paying for the voucher, sometimes several weeks in advance?

In real life, most goods and services are delivered on the spot, even if sold by agents or authorized representatives. To consumers unfamiliar with the daily deal model, the idea of pre-paying for a dubious-looking voucher that is to be stored in a smart phone or printed out for use during redemption in some future time at some third-party merchant may feel strange. Naturally, the higher the deal price, the greater the feeling of insecurity that it may be a fraud or that it may not be recognized by the merchant. How would consumers know if the merchant actually participated in that deal on said terms? There is no way to verify directly with the merchant.

It is by design that daily deal websites want to shield their visitors and buyers from the merchants. But daily deal website owners should also know that not all consumers have full confidence in newly-launched daily deal websites when deals more expensive than, say, US$50 are offered. There are fortunately some trust-building tactics that you can employ to increase conversions, in order of increasing difficulty:

1. Give them as much information as needed with respect to the deal.

2. Make it ridiculously easy to contact you – repeat your contact information redundantly if you have to. Always put up a physical address and phone number. And reply to queires promptly and without exceptions.

3. Have a no-questions-asked refund policy.

4. Display testimonials from your past buyers detailing their satisfactory experiences buying from you.

5. Create a community and let your members speak to each other.

The fact is that, if you are new in the daily deal industry, the odds are stacked against you. You will need to build up a community of members and buyers from the ground up and start building relationships with local merchants so as to get sustainable deal flow. Then there is the issue of trust, especially when you are new and relatively unknown and have no reputation whatsoever. Ultimately, the best strategy to build trust is to ensure that consumers can get independent, credible, and positive third-party opinions on you and your brand. That in itself can be a potent strategy not just for building trust but also for marketing and PR as well, so why not kill two birds with one stone?