Verification The growth of the sharing economy has practically blurred the line between marketplaces and communities.
For start-ups, and especially those that involve sharing like AirBnB, trust, transparency, and authenticity have become critical factors to stand out from the crowd and grow.
Marketplaces and Communities Need to Be Trustworthy
But this is the tricky part for online marketplaces, and all types of communities on the Internet: They all claim to be trustworthy — because they have to be trustworthy.
This is so important that even marketplaces operating on the Dark Web profess themselves to be trustworthy! But truly trustworthy communities — like the ones that operate on the indexed part of the Internet and have large numbers of users — still have to stay on top of things to keep their users happy.
Even the most reputable marketplaces have a steady flow of disputes to mediate. Sites that have guarantees to protect shoppers regularly deal with complaints about fake sellers. And there are plenty of venues where users continue to suffer from scams, fake orders, fake bookings and stolen payment information. It’s unfortunate how one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch.
I mean, how many times we have heard stories, personally or through the news, about scams online? Like the AirBnB host who returned from a business trip and found his or her apartment destroyed by a tenant? And let’s not forget the regular warnings on Craigslist about spam and scams: thieves soliciting wire transfers, fake ticket sales, lying landlords, fraudulent used car salespeople, or falsely solicited job ads?
Believe me, there’s a laundry list of fraudulent stories I’ve heard from friends and read about that has severely damaged my faith as a user in particular marketplaces.
How Do Successful Sites Do It?
I personally — and I’m sure most of you too — love the fact that these platforms can cut out the middleman, eliminating unnecessary extra expenses while offering us a safer place to connect, complete transactions, and communicate with others. But, how do successful and effective marketplaces do it?
The answer is simple: they make trust the key driver of the communities they build, and use trust as a major pillar for their growth. They keep the loyal audience in and the fraud out, because at the end of the day, just one dishonest user can literally spoil an entire community — once something bad happens, a reputational problem can spread like wildfire on the Internet.
That’s motivating sites to verify people’s identities using their phone numbers. Communities and marketplaces are adding RingCaptcha as a new layer of trust.Online marketplaces and communities are adding RingCaptcha as a layer of trust http://bit.ly/2nECrkl Share on X
With RingCaptcha, you have a universal and simple way to require users to provide a piece of traceable information, confirming whether they are who they claim they are.
You can implement RingCaptcha in a marketplace in a few ways: you can make it an optional step or mandatory — say, when people are creating profiles — or when suspicious activity warrants further verification.
To learn more about how to implement RingCaptcha on your website or application, please watch the video below. And when you’re ready to see for yourself how well it works, click here to sign up.
