Trust seals is the generic phrase used to depict those images (see collection at the bottom of the article) which online businesses use on their websites to address Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUDs).

Seals can be categorized into privacy seals, business validity seals, PCI compliancy seals, hacksafe seals and other types. It may be useful to know that there are seals which are applicable to certain industries only (like the Pharmacy Checker for Canadian pharmacies) and seals which can be used on most of the websites (business verification seals).

Smart online marketers use seals on websites to transfer trust from a well-know company (i.e. Verisign) to visitors and to make them feel comfortable about their privacy, confidentiality or other concerns. In our terms, we use them to increase the conversion rate of websites.

Do they really have an effect on conversion rate? Yes, they do, but each seal will perform different, simply because your audience is different than the other website. While I do recommend using some of the seals, namely those which anyone will recognize, I advocate for multivariate testing. Most likely, if used correctly the impact on conversion rate should be either positive or neutral. If improperly used (clicking is not working, fake seal, etc) your conversion rate could suffer.

Having 20 trust seals on each page of your website will hurt. Having none, may hurt also. For site wide use, you should display 2 or 3 of them, which are important and recognized by  your audience. However, if you’re would like flex you muscles with 10 or more (which I don’t advise), I would recommend creating a dedicated page on your site, where you can lay all of them.

Here are some ideas when it comes to using and testing trust seals:

• start testing with 2 or 3 seals: one wide known (i.e. McAfee) and your industry-specific seals
• always display the seal above the fold; if your copy is way longer, repeat it near your call to actions
• test overlaid seals (i.e. comodo, remains in the same position at scroll) against layout-integrated seals which have fixed position
• seals should be displayed site-wide (on all pages)
• except for checkout pages, where you may have a different layout, keep the seal in the same spot for the whole website

Additionally:

• a good place to test seals is near the logo (top left) or on the top right corner of the site
• test the logo near the main Call-To-Action (CTA) button
• display seals in the checkout process
• at click on the seal, open the merchant site in a new window

Those are only some ideas, but you I am sure that you can think of your own tests. One thing in particular (never tested by me thou) is to test the effectiveness of a no-spam seal in email blasts :)

Here’s the collection listed in alphabetical order – click seals to enlarge – (back to top):

If I missed some, let me know. Enjoy testing!