Displaying trust badges correlates significantly to increasing conversions and sales for eCommerce businesses
How significant of a lift can merchants expect to see?
Over that last decade, studies have shown that a customer is 17% more likely to complete a transaction online when provided with a trust badge during the checkout process. In many instances where brands are newer, a simple symbol reassuring the customer they’re heading in the right direction is arguably the most powerful action merchants can take to improve conversion rates.
So what exactly are they, and how can you easily incorporate them into your business? Let’s dive right into the various types you might be able to use to increase your online conversions and sales.
The basics: What are trust badges?
Trust badges are exactly what they sound like: a badge, or symbol, that is used to instill trust in the consumer that your business is authentic and legitimate to purchase from.
There are several varieties of them, which will be covered shortly, and the ultimate reason that online brands and services use them is to make the checkout process for a consumer both safe and to provide security and trust.
When third-party companies agree to allow your business to use their specific seal, they are confirming to potential customers that your business is authentic and that their data is secure.
What do trust badges look like?
If you’ve ever checked out from an online shop, you’ve likely noticed the small credit card symbols at the checkout, a simple reassurance. Below are some of the most common examples of what the badges may appear like, as found PNGkey.com.
Something to note: when implementing a trust badge on your eCommerce site, consider which types and styles will blend the best with your visual theme.
For instance, if a bright green SSL badge sticks out like a sore thumb on your website, it may also leave your customers questioning the validity. Keep this in mind while choosing which trust seal you utilize, as well as the appearance within your website.
With our Consumers Digest trust badge, we tried a handful of color palates & styles but settled on a combination of mostly blue and gold. It tends to blend in with many verified payment trust badges like Paypal or Mastercard and American Express to name a few. Most internet users have also grown accustomed to the blue checkmark across various social media channels over the last 15 + years and accept that it stands to verify official accounts (that is mostly true until Elon shook up the blue checkmark process but that’s neither here nor there). Verify your eCommerce brand with us today and unlock the power of trust across all channels and devices! Watch your conversions go to the moon!
Let’s go over different types of trust badges
What kinds of trust badges are there? Security tends be the number one driver pushing brands towards including trust badges in their brands but let’s check out 5 other common types of trust signals we strongly recommend your brand utilize starting today to increase add-to-carts & boost sales conversions.
The one trust badge that you must implement is a Secure Socket Layer Certificate badge, more commonly known as an SSL badge.
By default, any plugin for an online cart or shopping experience will almost always include an SSL certificate badge but in the event that it’s missing for any reason, displaying SSL certificates is an absolute must in today’s eCommerce environment.
Without it, the shopping process can be perceived by many to be insecure and could lead to a data breach. You want to avoid consumers feeling this way about your brand at all costs. Avoid this by simply adding security trust badges – typically towards the bottom of your home page in the footer of your website.
SSL has been around since 1994 and is part of the overall security protocol known as Transport Layer Security, or TLS. It is one of the basics of internet security, and is used to transmit sensitive information, such as credit card information when shopping.
Luckily, if you’re utilizing a Shopify account for your online shop, it is automatically SSL secure. This means any credit card information is encrypted, and your customers will see a little padlock in their URL when checking out, a sure sign that their information is safe.
Now that we’ve briefly covered the absolute must-have badge for security, let’s delve into the top 4 most used other options.
- Accepted payment badges: In our humble opinion, consumers shouldn’t bother entering credit card information during the checkout process if these trust badges are missing. Brands and consumers alike understand this so in an attempt to add legitimacy, most online shops now include the small visual signs for the accepted payment types, from credit card logos to the PayPal logo. They are small images but will let the consumer know how they will be able to pay before they enter their information.
- 3rd-Party Endorsements: We know a thing or two about this type of trust badge…we are one! The third-party endorsement trust badge incorporates an outside party to verify the validity of your business, and add credibility to your online store. Some of the most common badges in this category that come to mind are the Better Business Bureau, VeriSign, and Google Trusted Reviews, but there are a handful of other options that may help increase sales.
It may or may not come as a surprise to you that Norton was the top most trusted symbol when people went to pay online, followed closely by McAfee. As Baymard Institute notes, a third-party endorsement seal, “typically denotes business authenticity.” Nothing more, nothing less.
Over 60 years, we’ve worked super hard to be considered a category leader in the 3rd-party endorsement space. Since 1960 we’ve worked to verify thousands of brands by analyzing millions of trust signals across buyer journeys for brands of all sizes. In the last couple of years we’ve turned our attention towards verifying 3rd party sellers across some of the most common eCommerce platforms like Shopify because we identified a real gap in the market. Smaller, relatively unknown brands try to take advantage of shoppers by displaying trust badges that say anything and are backed by nothing while simultaneously gaming reviews, hoping consumers just don’t know any better. It’s time that a trusted 3rd party helped provide additional layers of trust to the purchasing experience to make sure shoppers are only purchasing from vetted brands!
- Money-back Guarantee Badges: These types of trust badges have really gained in popularity over the last decade as more and more eCommerce platforms have popped up. Many shops offer a 30-day money-back guarantee badge, and while it is rarely taken advantage of, it’s that simple reminder to consumers that the product you’re selling is legitimate.
This is one of the two most common “homemade” options for trust badges. This means that the only one that is responsible for this badge is your company, instead of a 3rd party. While it can be a useful badge, we want to warn shoppers that it’s often backed by nothing. This is also why we got into this space – to help bring honest company policies to the forefront. Brands can only display our verified trust badge after we’ve audited their company policies so you don’t have to!
- Free Shipping and Return Badge: Free shipping and return badges are exactly what you’d expect: that friendly small reminder to shoppers that their products will be sent free of shipping charge.
These are some of the most reassuring badges in the era of Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime made “free shipping” something to be taken for granted, so when consumers come across something similar to what they could get elsewhere but with free-shipping, they’ll often do this.
While consumers might not want to leave the comfort of their house to shop, they also don’t want to pay for the convenience.
A free shipping option can seal the deal for those on-the-fence consumers. But once again, we recommend that buyers beware. Just because a company claims “free returns” or displays a badge stating a “money back guarantee” doesn’t always mean that’s the truth. In our experience, we’ve found that many brands know this will put a consumer’s mind more at ease and pray on doing exactly that without having any real intention of helping you out once they have your credit card information. This is why it pays to shop with only verified merchants through a 3rd-party company that specializes in vetting brands so you don’t have to!
So what’s the impact a trust badge can have on conversions and sales?
If you’ve ever arrived at an online checkout, only to notice that there’s no note of which payment types are accepted and thus navigated away, you’re a prime example of why trust badges matter to conversions.
Trust matters for conversions
In a list compiled by the Baymard Institute, the organization compiled 41 studies focused on why consumers abandon an online shopping cart.
Of the people who abandon their shopping cart, 17% said it was due to concerns in credit card security. This isn’t a number to scoff at!
This Baymard graph showcases the reality of how many consumers abandon their online shopping carts, and the main reasons why.
While some of those are outside of your control, one easy fix is to always make sure that there is a valuable trust badge to remind people looking to purchase items that your business and product is legitimate and worth the money. We encourage all of our merchants to place trust badges in product images and strategically below add-to-cart & checkout buttons.
On average, between 70-80 percent of shoppers abandon their shopping carts for various reasons.
That means that if you were to have 1,000 shoppers add something to their cart, only about 300 of them would actually make it through the entire checkout process.
If you improve your security via trust badges, you could be looking at improvement of around 120 more shoppers (approximately 17 percent of that remaining 700 consumers) making it through the checkout process.
Suddenly, the percentage of consumers making it across the finish line increases from about 30% to close to 40%. Now that is a very real increase in sales.
So, yes, security really does matter. If you haven’t updated your store to include at least one trust badge, now is the time to make a difference in your online sales.
Now, does it matter which trust seal you implement in your store and what should you take into consideration before adding trust badges to your checkout process?
First, the generational impact of trust badges is significant.
CXL performed a study in 2016 on trust seals and found that Paypal was most trusted by those aged 50 and older, Sitelock was most useful for those falling into Generation X, and finally, millennials were most apt to purchase something with a stamped “Google Trusted Store.”
Interestingly, there were also gender differences in trust badges, with women preferring a Better Business Bureau stamp.
This can have a definitive impact on your sales; if you understand your ideal consumer, including age and gender, you’ll be better equipped in knowing which trust badge to use for your business.
Gone are the days of the internet when you can be directed to an entirely different site to complete the purchase. Just ten years ago, this was not outside the norm.
Today though, a shopper is wary even when the theme of the website isn’t in agreement with the checkout process. If a badge doesn’t add trust because it feels distinctly different than your website, it is worthless.
Bring it all together: Below are some additional high value use cases your brand should consider implementing
While the importance of trust badges have been covered extensively in the sections above, it’s worth reiterating that establishing quick trust and credibility with your brand’s target buyers is what all businesses should strive for. Strategically placed trust badges can help brands attract, acquire, convert and retain customers without necessarily needing to spend more to do it whereas other marketing efforts are often more vulnerable to inflationary pressures and have become as effective as the budgets allocated to them unfortunately. Incorporate the tactics below to help you overcome some of the challenges your brand may be dealing with & get those results you’ve been striving for!
A quick recap from above but this use case is so important that it bears repeating: Add trust signals to your product images:
Our data shows that adding trust badges to product images can increase add-to-carts by up to 100% and boost completed conversions by as much as 300%. Consumers are visual creatures and we’re drawn to high-quality images but adding trust symbols to them distinguishes them from the rest. The revenue correlation is a game changer.
You’ll also notice the trust badge displayed below the add-to-cart button in the image above. Doing this helps preemptively ease any hesitation on the customer end and reduces their fear of progressing through the next steps of the checkout process. With 7-8 out of 10 shoppers dropping out of the average brand’s checkout funnel before completing a purchase, any effort that keeps customers from leaving can lead to massive conversion results. Especially efforts that don’t break the bank! We also highly recommend adding trust badges below your checkout buttons & displaying them in your website footer.
Try adding trust badges to all different types of emails:
Emails are still among the best ways to communicate with your customers. When it comes to conversions, there simply isn’t a more powerful channel than email. In fact, industry insiders claim the average click-through rate of an email campaign is around 3% (of total recipients), whereas the average click-through rate from let’s say, a tweet is only around 0.5%. 3% is 6x 0.5%! This means you are 6 times more likely to get someone to click through to your website via your email than you are from Twitter.
Your email subscribers have told you they want to hear from you and this isn’t typically the case with social. Research suggests 4.24% of visitors from email marketing actually buy something as compared to just 2.49% of visitors from search engines compared to a measly 0.59% from social media, according to a survey conducted by Monetate.
- Email generates the highest ROI – Like we have mentioned above already, email is the single most effective advertising channel. Nothing else generates $38 – $44 in ROI for every $1 spent. Nothing. Seriously, think about all of your marketing channels. Do any of them generate 3,800 – 4,400% returns for your business? Nope. Many eCommerce companies are lucky to break even on their paid advertising investments.
And the best part? There’s a handful of different types of emails that your brand can send customers to interact with them in different ways. We encourage your business to add trust badges to all of the them and test which types perform the best: Welcome emails, Abandoned cart emails, Transaction emails, Shipping update emails, Reward emails, Referral emails, Leave a review emails, Flash sale emails.
The above picture shows 2 different types of emails effectively displaying trust badges to help boost conversions. The email on the left is an example of an abandoned cart email where this brand placed the trust badge in the top right corner of the product pictures. In many cases, sending abandoned cart emails helps nudge undecided shoppers to complete the purchase they may have forgotten about for any number of reasons. The trust badge provides that little something extra to help overcome any lingering hesitation or potential fear.
The email on the right is an example of a leave a review type of email where the user is incentivized to leave a review in exchange for receiving a discount on their next purchase if they complete the desired action. Discounts and special offers are effective strategies to get users to a) buy again soon & b) increase average order values. All shoppers enjoy a good discount because it offers a chance to save money and in some cases, save money buying something they may have already planned on purchasing anyways. The added kicker this company includes is the chance to leave a review via user generated content whereby the purchaser is offered the opportunity to gain attention within the brand’s community if they leave a review as well. Trust signals verifying the validity of said reviews helps boost community credibility to members and especially non-members, enticing them to join the party so to speak.
We also highly recommend placing trust badges in transaction and shipping update emails because they offer phenomenal opportunities to drive more cross-sells and upsells.
Whether your brand resonates best with customers through Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, TikTok or any other number of channels, adding trust badges to product pictures in the actual paid ad is a super effective way to increase CTRs (click-thru-rates), add-to-carts & completed purchases.
After testing with brands over the course of the last decade, the data suggests that adding trust badges to the actual creative in paid ads makes a significant difference. Consider this: If you’re a newer, smaller brand just starting out, users see your ads in their social feeds or in their search results and most make up their minds not to click, regardless of how well intended your messaging is. Why? Because scams, identify theft and fraud have touched far too many lives and users feel burned. Trust badges help combat this problem. Our badge is proven to help ease customer fears and get you more clicks because only vetted 3rd party sellers can display it. As a shopper, you can trust that the random brands you’re seeing pop up in your feeds have been vetted to make sure you only consider purchasing from verified sellers.
Users respond similarly to trust badges on landing pages & discounted offers like they do when they see trust signals in paid ads. Maybe they’ve clicked through to your landing page from a paid ad or a link in an email but they’re still unsure if they want to keep shopping or progress through your checkout flow. That’s a problem for your bottom line. Our trust badge can help convince a potential shopper that your website can be trusted and that their information is protected.
By adding our verified trust badge near CTAs on landing pages, you’re leveraging the reputation of Consumers Digest, a larger and more-trusted brand, signaling to hesitant users that it’s safe to continue on their path to purchase. Enhance your reputation through our third-party endorsement and watch your sales take off!
Who specifically benefits most from social proof and trust badges?
eCommerce Merchants & Brands
To succeed in today’s ultra-competitive online marketplace, eCommerce merchants need to leverage social proof to build trust at every stage of their sales funnels. Strategically placing trust badges at key touchpoints is a proven way brands can:
- Establish instant credibility
- Boost website conversions
- Reduce cart abandonment
- Grow average order value (AOV)
- Drive repeat purchase behavior
- Increase sales and revenue
eCommerce & Direct-To-Consumer brands
In addition to eCommerce merchants, trust badges benefit other kinds of B2C and DTC brands. Compared to having a brick & mortar retail location, selling online can be a challenge. That’s why online merchants need to do whatever they can to dissolve customers’ fears when placing their orders. Trust marks help make that happen without any additional effort for the seller.
Founders & Entrepreneurs:
Owners of small businesses, mid-tier SMBs, and enterprise brands can authentically build instant credibility by showing offers that have been vetted and verified by Consumer’s Digest, a trusted third party with over 60 years of experience analyzing thousands of products and companies.
Marketing & eCommerce Agencies
Agencies are another business that can benefit from trust badges. While they can use them on their company sites, agencies can quickly boost conversion rates, lower acquisition costs, and drive more revenue for clients by strategically placing trust badges across their websites and online stores.
Marketing Teams
Increasing trust for website visitors and converting more inbound traffic into quality leads for sales teams are just a few of the challenges marketers face. That’s why the most successful marketing teams leverage any element that can accelerate and compress the trust cycle in their campaigns.
- Perfect for C-Suite, Directors, VPs, Managers, ICs, and Bloggers!
- Trust badges allow marketing teams to stop reporting on marketing’s potential. Instead, the badges allow marketing teams to build reports highlighting which sales were generated by which channels. Now brands can finally uncover how their marketing efforts impact their sales.
- Go beyond lead volume. Make it easier to get the sign-off needed when it comes to budgeting. Pinpoint which parts of your marketing work and which parts don’t.
Sales Teams
Sales professionals also face the challenge of qualifying leads and converting free users into paying ones. Trust badges can significantly increase conversions when used in middle-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel activities by enhancing marketing assets with increased social proof.
- Prioritize channels that drive results: Tracking website visitors across many different sources helps sales teams understand where leads came from and whether they convert into a sale. Insights like these help to turn more leads and prospects into sales. It’s the missing piece of the puzzle.
Customer Success Teams
While CS teams need to provide effective self-serve support content to customers, they’re also responsible for nurturing loyalty, driving repeat sales, managing churn, increasing customer retention, and growing LTV. Like marketing and sales teams, smart CS teams leverage social proof and trust marks whenever they can.
Generally speaking, the badge helps all business units plug the data gap to optimize business processes:
- Effective trust badges lead to better & tighter QBRs for department leaders, stronger 1-on-1s for managers, and ICs by team. Stronger goals are being set by company execs from the top down top. More data to make stronger OKRs/KPIs. All stakeholders are aligned by a shared vision.
- Data can help leaders do better with planning, allocating, strategy, road mapping, and execution across the entire company.
- Investors can quickly and easily see hard data about what works and what doesn’t so they can give better feedback to execs. The data collected by the badge can also lead to more productive board meetings between execs and investors due to the granularity of our in-depth insights captured across the full funnel.
Close The Loop: Upon conversion, the badge helps assign revenue to the channels, campaigns, and keywords that have influenced it. Your whole GTM motion can benefit from this information.
Final thoughts: Testing leads to understanding what’s most effective
Two of the most important factors for a customer to consider when making a purchase are the quality of the products or services provided by a company and the security of the transaction. It’s understandable that people are wary about providing personal data online. With the number of data breaches that have occurred and identity theft being such a huge topic of conversation over the last 20+ years, it’s not a mystery why consumers are so cautious about their online purchases. This is why gaining their trust is so crucial.
If a well-designed payment form can significantly improve conversion rates by incorporating trust badges at minimal cost, isn’t that ROI well worth pursuing? If trust badges near CTAs on landing pages or in the images used in paid ads can help generate instant credibility and boost purchasing activity, why not test the limits of how far that can be leveraged?
With that mentality, it is worth reviewing how you are using, or in some cases, not using trust badges across your website. Split test your product & sales pages to discover if the opportunity to leverage trust badges exists. Can your brand improve CTRs, add-to-carts and completed purchases? If under monetized touchpoints exist throughout your buyer’s journey, add trust signals to shore up those deficiencies and watch your revenue benefit accordingly.
We understand that your time is important, and some of these trust badges take effort to understand how to implement for optimal results. But don’t miss out on valuable sales because shoppers are unsure if they can trust you ever again. We’re here to make sure shoppers only buy from vetted, verified brands going forward. There’s a better way for buyers and sellers to both achieve their goals. Get yourself a Consumers Digest verified badge today and be the change you want to see in the marketplace!
