Ask HN: Seals/certifications are a scam... but are they worth it?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2202086

by pitdesi • 15 years ago

26 16 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

We FeeFighters help SMB's save money on credit card processing. We do need some somewhat sensitive information to run our reverse auctions, like the amount of credit card receipts a company expects. We're going through the process of TRUSTe and BBB certification. It's not really much of a process, really, you pay ~$1000 they ask a few questions and you can put the seal on your site... As we know seeing what happens in the credit card processing business, there are many companies that have A+ ratings that treat their customers like crap. Until a few months ago, Ritz Carlton, Disney, and Wolfgang Puck had F ratings but Hamas had an A grade. (see here: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/business-bureau-ritz-carlton/story?id=12151154)

We're doing the TRUSTe certification, and they only asked a few cursory questions... but they present case studies with a significant bump in conversion rate (trustguard has a somewhat hilarious link on their site that says "Trustguard increases conversion rate 60%). I personally have never given any credence to a security seal on a website.

Have you seen conversion rate increases due to the presence of a security, BBB, or Trust seal? How do people feel about the seals generally?

spooneybarger4• 15 years ago

We did some testing on this a couple years ago... trust-e showed no statistically significant boost with where we placed it.

We had tested the 'hacker safe' logo ( that mcaffee since bought and renamed ). Depending on where it was placed in the order process ( it was a multiple step process ), it either had no noticeable effect to a 15% conversion boost.

For customers outside the US, neither had any impact at all, where we tested them. For the hacker safe logo, it had the biggest effect when placed near product selection and when the user was entering credit card information.

I would suggest doing some serious a/b testing to figure out where the logos should go if you get them as from my experience, placement is everything.

pitdesi3• 15 years ago

Cool... what kind of site were you testing it on? We'll do our own a/b testing but I think it makes sense that near product selection and credit card entry is the place for it to go. For us it'll be near where they enter sensitive information.

spooneybarger4• 15 years ago

Health and beauty site.

Vitamins, Fish Oil, Acne Medication etc type stuff.

noodle2• 15 years ago

i know someone that has proven through their own A/B testing that a seal (i forget which, possibly TRUSTe) increased their conversions. not 60%, but maybe 10%.

they referred to it as the #1 change they made in testing that increased conversions.

wlll• 15 years ago

I've heard exactly the same thing from a friend who runs an e-commerce site, though I can't remember what the % improvement was it definitely noticeable.

spooneybarger4• 15 years ago

2 biggest things we did in testing that increased conversions where.

1. split a 1 step order process into 4-5 smaller ones. ( 40% increase at the time ) 2. modified pricing ( increased conversion but more importantly, increased effective revenue, ie conversion boost offset the lower price and then some. )

noodle2• 15 years ago

i should clarify (since i can't edit anymore) that this was/is an ecommerce site that didn't have much wiggle room in changing prices

aresant• 15 years ago

A couple of notes:

a) Placement of your seals / certifications makes a huge difference in regards to conversion rate : http://conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/proper-placement-of...

b) These certifications and seals are a necessary evil for online commerce & the BBB has tested for us as most important.

We've found time and time again that the BBB symbol is the MOST powerful of the seals and this is across many industries.

Consumers trust the BBB, businesses realize that the BBB is essentially like paying Mafia protection money.

The one positive I can say, however, is that the BBB acts like a lightning rod - angry customers will file complaints and that gives you the opportunity to resolve those complaints often before they head to merchant processing, etc.

pitdesi3• 15 years ago

Thanks... I hate supporting groups like this, but it seems like a necessary evil. I love your mafia analogy!

matdwyer• 15 years ago

Ugh, I hate the fact that BBB charges you an extra $xxx just to put their seal on your site, in addition to you paying their basic fees. It's extortion in my mind, but yes, Mafia like protection

thrill• 15 years ago

I've found, in the small startup I'm working with right now, that those of us with more of a marketing and sales background think seals and stamps and certifications are the cat's meow, and those of us with more of an engineering background think they're just noise, and make our websites ugly.

I wouldn't trust data from the agency selling the certification - but it'd probably cost more than the certification cost to setup, gather, and analyze your own collection of data.

Our group expects to have a mutually beneficial relationship with certain industry groups - we've gone to the trouble of creating our own custom designs that contain the name of the external group to serve the place of a seal that link to the appropriate spots on the websites of those other industry groups. These fit the look of our site better, making our design guys happy, and kept the marketing guys happy because they can display our relationship. Our engineering guys still think they're mostly noise, but grudgingly admit they probably do get peripherally noticed the same way one notices the hash marks in a crosswalk.

brandong• 15 years ago

We have seen a negligible (and debatable) conversion rate increase using Trust Guard. However, it's much cheaper than any of the alternatives- so cheap that we opt to have it despite concrete evidence of it's success.

I agree with you in that all of these certs are a sham, but I would argue that for many customers of standard e-commerce (especially online retail) operations they are another thing going in your favor in attempts to appear as a professional outfit.

I'd never put any credence in a seal, but there are many customers that may. It's not worth a $1000/year to us, but it is worth ~$125/year.

Hope this helps!

mcherm• 15 years ago

If someone did a study on these, I'd love to see the effect of posting a meaningless seal. That is, a logo which was made up to LOOK like some official seal, but which is not actually issued by any organization.

My guess is that the effect on conversion rate would be rather similar. After all, who actually knows what TRUSTe is?

pitdesi3• 15 years ago

Should we make a hackernews seal of approval with a link that references how bullshit seals are?

spooneybarger4• 15 years ago

We did that. Swapped out the 'hacker safe' logo with one we created that just said '100% Secure Server'. About 10% drop off at that step.

YMMV. But that 10% drop off level was still higher than with no seals at all. In the case where we did that, it was only on step 4 of the process where we collected credit card information.

joshfraser• 15 years ago

I've been looking at this lately with my work with Torbit. One thing to keep in mind is the performance hit you may take from including that seal. They are usually served directly from the certification companies website and often take multiple seconds to load. Depending on how they block the rendering of your page, the seals could actually hurt your conversion rate just from the performance hit.

Ask HN: Seals/certifications are a scam... but are they worth it?

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