72% of Shoppers Will Buy From a Brand They've Never Heard Of. Here's What Gets You the Sale.

In the last three months, 72% of online shoppers bought something from a brand they'd never heard of before. That's the headline finding from a new Bizrate Insights report on new-to-brand buyer trust, and it's good news: strangers are willing to buy from you. The report's more useful contribution is what comes next, a detailed, data-backed picture of exactly what a first-time buyer needs to see before they'll actually go through with it, and exactly what makes them bail.

Based on a survey of 939 U.S. online shoppers conducted in April 2026, the research breaks the first-time purchase decision down into concrete signals: what gets a new store discovered, what earns enough trust to convert, and what kills the sale on the spot. None of it requires guesswork. It's a checklist.

Strangers Are Buying, But They're Testing You First

The opportunity is real and specific by category: clothing, shoes, and accessories accounted for a full 25% of first-time brand purchases in the data, well ahead of beauty and personal care (14%) and electronics (10%). But the same shoppers who are willing to try you are also being careful about it. More than half (54%) kept their first order from an unfamiliar brand under $50, and women skewed even more conservative, with 63% staying under that threshold compared to 46% of men, who were more likely to push past $100 on a first purchase.

The report's own takeaway here is a concrete one: build a low-risk entry point, a hero product, a starter kit, a limited first-order bundle, designed to over-deliver on value. The goal isn't maximizing the size of a first order. It's making that first small bet feel safe enough to lead directly into a second, larger one.

Every item on that list is something you can audit on your own site this week. None of it requires guessing at what a stranger wants to see.

Forget Influencers. Marketplaces and Search Are Doing the Actual Discovery Work

Despite how much attention influencer marketing gets, only 4% of shoppers in this data discovered a new brand through an influencer or creator. Social ads and organic posts combined accounted for roughly a quarter of discoveries. The real discovery engines were considerably less glamorous: online marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, and Etsy led at 28%, followed by search engines at 21%, together accounting for about half of all first-time brand discoveries. Shoppers, per the report, are 7 times more likely to discover a new brand on a marketplace than through an influencer.

That's a real budget-allocation signal. Being discoverable, well-optimized listings, current reviews, visible presence, on Amazon or Walmart does more heavy lifting for new customer acquisition than most influencer campaigns, in large part because a shopper finding you on a marketplace is already in active buying mode, not just passively scrolling. Search discoverability matters just as much, which is exactly what our SEO and content strategy service is built around.

Reviews Are the Single Biggest Lever You Have

When asked what they need to see before buying from an unfamiliar store, shoppers named customer reviews (52%), clear shipping costs (48%), trusted payment options (44%), and a straightforward refund policy (39%) as the baseline requirements. But when the report asked what single factor actually seals the deal, verified customer reviews with photos pulled decisively ahead at 30%, well clear of trusted payment options (22%), return policies (21%), and customer support access (19%).

And you don't need a huge review count to clear the bar. Nearly half of shoppers (46%) are comfortable buying with just 5 to 49 reviews. On star ratings specifically, 4.0 stars is the hard floor, cited by 32% of shoppers as the minimum they'll accept, with another 25% wanting 4.1 to 4.4 stars. Anything below 4.0 puts you in territory most shoppers simply won't enter.

The practical implication: get to your first handful of verified, photo-backed reviews as fast as possible, and then protect that 4.0-star floor closely, because it functions as a hard cutoff for a meaningful share of potential first-time buyers, not a soft preference.

A Good Return Policy Can Beat a Better Review Score

One of the more striking findings in the report: when shoppers were shown two identical products at identical prices, one from a store with 100+ reviews and a 4.6 rating but store-credit-only returns, and another with fewer reviews, a lower rating, and a longer delivery window but full refunds to the original payment method, 54% chose the store with the weaker review profile specifically because of its return policy.

That's a useful data point for a newer brand still building its review base: you haven't necessarily earned the right to a strict return policy yet, and a clear, no-hassle refund policy can function as a real conversion lever, not just a customer-service nicety, even against a competitor with a stronger-looking trust profile on paper.

The Trust Killers: What Sends Shoppers Away Immediately

On the flip side, the report identifies specific red flags shoppers use to rule out an unfamiliar store fast: a checkout that doesn't look secure (41%), too few reviews (38%), an unprofessional-looking website (37%), suspiciously low prices (33%), and too many pop-ups (30%). Hard-to-find contact information (29%) and a buried return policy (26%) round out the list.

Two of those are worth flagging specifically because they're easy to underestimate. Suspiciously low prices raise doubt across every age group, particularly among shoppers over 40, meaning aggressive discount-based customer acquisition can quietly undercut the trust you're trying to build elsewhere on the page. And 63% of shoppers said they'd rather buy from a store with an estimated delivery window and access to a real human than one with an exact delivery date but AI-only support, a meaningful signal that automation without an accessible human fallback reads as a risk, not a convenience, to a first-time buyer specifically. Done well, automation and a real human path aren't a tradeoff, which is the core idea behind our AI-adopted design service.

• Build a low-risk first-order option (starter kit, hero product, small bundle) rather than optimizing for average order value on a shopper's very first purchase
• Prioritize marketplace and search discoverability over influencer spend if new-customer acquisition is the immediate goal
• Get to your first 5 to 49 verified reviews with photos as fast as possible, and treat your 4.0-star rating as a hard floor to protect
• Make your return policy clear and generous upfront, especially if your review base or star rating isn't fully built out yet
• Audit your checkout, site design, and contact information for anything that could read as unprofessional or not secure to someone who's never bought from you before
• Make sure automated support has a clear, visible path to a real human, particularly for first-time buyers navigating an unfamiliar purchase

The Takeaway

The opportunity this report documents is real and large: nearly three-quarters of online shoppers are actively willing to buy from brands they've never heard of. But willingness isn't the same as an open door. Every one of these findings, reviews, return policy, checkout security, discovery channel, human support access, is a specific, checkable box a first-time buyer is running through, consciously or not, before they hand over a payment method. Brands that treat this as a literal checklist convert a meaningfully higher share of the strangers who show up ready to give them a chance. Getting the review infrastructure, checkout, and site design right together is squarely a conversion rate optimization problem, not a series of separate fixes.

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