Most of today’s shoppers are savvy enough to know that shopping online is a terrific convenience when ordering from a reputable company. While the fear of shopping online has significantly diminished over the last decade, more e-commerce shoppers know how to determine whether or not a site is trustworthy. A trust seal clearly displayed on the home page of a website is quickly noticed by the first time shopper, distinguishing the safe website from the fly-by-night business. However, there is much more to actual notion of safe web browsing than simply displaying a trust logo.
Several years back, the FTC vehemently announced that one particular trust seal provider doesn’t really verify much at all, leading consumers to believe every site containing ‘Verified Secure’ protection labels is really trustworthy when, factually speaking, they were not. ControlScan was the company FTC investigators chastised for having lackluster protocols for checking the veracity of websites requesting seals. The company, since their injunctions, was simply told never to misrepresent themselves to anyone again.
Since that time, many people have truly wondered how consumers can begin trusting security seals in electronic commerce today. We’ve researched several solutions which contrite businesses could consider to instill trust into hungry website shoppers when landing on your e-commerce-related domain names.
Lay Your Business Out Clearly
Figuratively speaking, security seals are theoretically given to businesses with exemplary SSL technologies, long histories of conducting fraud-free business and having their contact information visible to everyone who stops by. After all, many people wouldn’t stop into physical store locations with leaky roofing or known felons working the cash register; therefore, consumers want indemnification before shopping online with different merchants. To alleviate businesses from being deemed untrustworthy, here are simple avenues which businesses could utilize:
- Dedicate an entire page which clearly outlines your proprietors’ names, addresses and contact information, along with everything which accurately describes what your business is about.
- Always have customer service based in the same general locality as your business. Outsourcing may appear money-saving, yet it’s also trust-threatening to domain names of newer nature.
- Describe to customers specifically how you remain secure, entailing the steps which your company takes, or took, to keep their private information secured. Trust seals given by third party companies are good; forthcoming approaches by business owners are slightly more honest.
Remember, customers aren’t particularly keen on trusting some seal; they want security in knowing your business proactively monitors traffic, transactions and quickly ameliorates hacker attempts. By outlining your entire safe shopping approach, customers will drop their shopping guards.
Perform Due Diligence On Seal Providers
Since trust seal providers believe they’re the authority on website protection certification, perhaps flipping the script on Trust Guard, VeriSign, Starfield or other companies providing these bulk seals by performing due diligence would help the business owner truly have ‘trust’ in their corner. Since several dozen certificate providers exist and charge varied fees for seal usage, perhaps start your search with the Better Business Bureau – the one source everyone trusts since they have physical locations around the USA and Canada. Other such procedural steps for screening potential trust seal providers include:
- Contact their company representative to inquire what makes them the go-to authority on trust seals. Collect as much information on partners, names or internal figures of high importance and make sure they, themselves, don’t have felonious intent.
- Check to make sure nobody within the business has previously been sued or mitigated against whatsoever. This should’ve been clearly represented when purchasing used domain names.
Putting each trust seal vendor under the microscope will assure you, your business and customers that trust is truly emanating across the board instead of scandal surrounding the source of the seal.
Impact Trust Seals Have On Sales Conversion
Although previously released news outlined one particular company which wasn’t so ‘trustworthy’ when it came to issuing security seals, living without these profound trust indicators could also have enormous impact on businesses, especially if freshly launched. In this section, we’ll identify how conversions could dwindle down to zero without trust security seals clearly posted on sales pages and check-out areas.
Trust Seals Open Wallets
Past studies conducted by Marketing Sherpa revealed that nearly 9% increases in sales were recorded by Petco.com when they finally placed their McAfee Secure seal along their logo header. Sure, maybe this was an industry-specific study; the statistic itself, however, is living testament of how security seals which are placed in identifiable places increase consumers’ willingness to splurge on items they need – and don’t need.
Add proper optimization of sales pages and close analytical studying and your business could explode in sales simply by paying closer attention to the presentation of facts across domain names being substantiated.
Security Seals Lower Fraud
Fraudulence will never completely back away from internet dominance; security seals do, however, lower the risk for businesses who pay close attention to traffic, transactions and even blog posts. Since fraudsters will attempt credit card theft on stored information by consumers or simply hijack cards from other sources and use them on your site, security sealing your site with logos and technology from trusted sources will decrease fraudulent activity potential whereas untrusted websites will become the new prey.
Here are some interesting facts related to general website security which will hopefully compel your business to take action in securing all domain names and pages which affect business and customer info:
- Around 53% of hacked websites had data records lifted using shared login credentials
- Roughly 81% of security breaches were non-PCI compliant prior to being hacked
- Most common current hack job? SQL injection.
- Over 80% of hacks were avoidable simply by having proper website seals and proper controls
As you see, plenty of database hacks are contributed to businesses not willing to spend equally on marketing and security. With more credit card fraud happening today than ever before, it’s about time to give your customers the trust they deserve when shopping on your website.
Major Security Seal Players
If you’ve currently mulled over placing security seals on your website to correlate with SSL technologies, it’s suggested you study each potential seal provider and costs involved before making that final decision. Certain companies indemnify your site in different ways; currently, four major players are available solely to provide security credentials for your business’ web presence.
- VeriSign – The main interest VeriSign takes in your website is assuring the site owner is quickly identified while scanning each site it protects for malware daily. Since Symantec took over this company, customers are flocking to the virus murderer for safe website seals. $29 per month or $299 per year will earn this seal.
- McAfee SECURE™ – The company boasts your sales will increase an average of 12% in today’s world simply by using their security seal. Pricing available through sales rep contact only and is based loosely on number of IP’s being secured by McAfee.
- Comodo HackerProof – Currently offering 90 days to test drive their well-known security seal which they guarantee to be hacker-proof; $2295.00 per year earns this indemnity for your biz.
- GeoTrust – Using basic SSL technology, GeoTrust issues their certificates for $299 per year, perhaps the best value with most widely trusted name backing your information.
Conclusion
Many businesses either skimp on qualified trust seal services or simply forego the expense. Not understanding the ROI implicated by customer trust will amount to back clicks and lost sales. Those currently using any of the four listed security seal providers have likely noticed increased conversion rates simply by placing the seal in obvious areas of the website, i.e. footer or top right column. Surely, the top brand names online would not have attained their sound foundations had they not considered trust an important asset to earn from their customers.
About the author
Roger Klawinski is a freelance writer and experienced domainer from Indiana who keep up with domain and search trends. You can follow him on Google +
