Trust Badges are used to give customers peace of mind while shelling out their credit card information over the internet. However, not all trust badges were created equally.

It is important to invest time into trust badges because in some surveys, as many as 61% of participants said they had decided not to purchase a product because it was missing a trust seal.

On top of that, out of consumers who dropped out of a purchase, 17% mentioned “concerns about payment security” and 18% of users claimed they abandoned checkout because they did not trust the website. A survey conducted by Econsultancy/Toluna confirmed this, reporting that 48% of participants need to see trust seals in order to trust a website.

So what kind of impact can trust badges have on your conversions?

Here are some interesting stats on how conversions changed after altering trust badges:

► Establishing credibility with a trust badge increased the conversion rate by 72.05% for VWO.

► Blue Fountain Media replaced a generic privacy policy reminder with a branded Verisign trust seal and saw a 42% increase in sales for the trust seal-containing page.

► Virtual Sheet Music experienced a significant drop in sales when its trust seal provider removed the seal due to a contractual disagreement. Upon reinstating the seal, the website saw a 31% increase in conversions.

► Clean Energy Experts found that adding a trust seal increased conversions by 137%.

It is clear that having trust badges is beneficial, but which ones should you have on your site?

First let’s start with the ones you should probably steer clear of: Authorize.net, TrustGuard, Trustwave, GeoTrust, and BizRate. The first three mentioned have actually lowered conversion rates and the last two tend not to impact conversions one way or the another. If you are looking to improve conversions, do not bother with these options.

Moving on to actual contenders in the trustworthy trust badges, we have the Norton SECURED VeriSign badge and the McAfee SECURE badge. Back in 2013, 35% of people considered the Norton SECURED VeriSign badge to give the most reassurance of a safe transaction, but since then more recent studies have suggested that the McAfee SECURE badge has the biggest impact on conversions.

One study from Inflow set out to test if McAfee had the biggest impact on conversions. To do this, they set up 3 tests on different types of eCommerce sites and came up with this:

• Test 1: Norton SECURED got a 4.7% lift in conversions while McAfee SECURE got a 15.7% lift in conversions.
• Test 2: An outdoor gear ecommerce site got a 21.5% lift in conversions the McAfee SECURE badge.
• Test 3: A house plans ecommerce site got a 76.2% lift in conversions with the McAfee SECURE badge.

*Note: Test 1 compared having no badge, Norton SECURED, and McAfee SECURED whereas Test 2 and 3 compared having no badge to McAfee SECURED only.

The Bottom Line

If you want to put only one trust badge, put the McAfee SECURE badge. It has been proven that it increases conversions and is worth investing in.

Another piece of advice: consider investing in three site seals: a Norton SSL seal to indicate an encrypted connection, a McAfee seal to indicate a clean, non-infected “hacker safe” site, and finally either a BBB Accredited or TRUSTe seal for establishing trust in consumer relations.

Have you noticed a difference in conversions after adding a trust badge? Let us know in the comments below.

Sources

• How Users Perceive Security During the Checkout Flow (Baymard Institute)
• 4 Checkout Design Tips to Boost Ecommerce Conversions (Pay Motion)
• 31 E-commerce Conversion Rate Optimization Ideas You Must Try (Invesp)
• 5 “Trust Badges” That can Increase Your Conversion Rate (MonetizePros)
• 7 Simple A/B Tests That Can Increase Conversions by 10% or More (QuickSprout)
• Which Site Seal do People Trust the Most? (Baymard Institute)
• Why Choosing the Right Trust Seal Increases eCommerce Conversions (The Daily Egg)
• The Importance of Trust Seals for E-Commerce Conversions (oBundle)
• Trust Seals: We Ran 3 Tests on McAfee and Norton Trust Seals. Here’s What We Found (Inflow)