With millions if not billions of sites on the internet having a standard privacy policy on your site can be comforting. TRUSTe offers this. You adopt their criteria for your privacy policy and they audit your company and if you’re compliant you earn their badge. This along with other similar services can alleviate concerns of shoppers - they don’t have to read through long, cumbersome privacy policies to determine if you’re going to sell their information to other marketers.

Reputation badges from the Better Business Bureau or American Express and others can likewise offer comfort that a third-party will help to resolve a dispute should one arise. Most consumers will also realize that in order to remain in good standing with these reputation companies you need to provide good service and act in good faith. Again, reputation and privacy badges can be important to savvy online shoppers or to new visitors to your site since their endorsements by impartial third parties.

Social networking

You shouldn’t leave out social networking either. Facebook, Twitter, Yelp! and others allow customers or prospects to seek out others who’ve shopped with you or to find negative or positive reviews. And while you need to avoid being overly reactionary online when dealing with bad reviews social networking sites can allow you to offer your side of the story. After all not every sale to everyone can be successful and leave all parties happy - but by participating in social networking sites you can engage with unhappy customers or explain bad scenarios and learn to do better. In fact, social networking is becoming increasingly important as friends seek the advice and experiences of others before making purchases. And companies are using social network sites for customer service and to find and help unsatisfied customers. So including links to your Facebook, Twitter, and other pages is a good idea.

So should you include trust icons? The short answer, yes, but…

Unless you’re a well known, trusted brand, then if you’re able to incorporate trust icons into your design, they can definitely help to alleviate fears of new visitors. McAfee offers an internal study of their retailers who noticed a 12% increase in sales when using the McAfee Site Secure seal. Other survey’s and our empirical experiences as a web developers also show that including trust icons on a site can help to foster trust. However, the icons can’t overcome larger mistrust producing problems, such as a badly functioning site, an unprofessional design, or a slow loading or confusing site. Trust is granted by a visitor based on many factors. And while trust icons can increase the likelihood trust will be exchanged (via transference) the mere presence of trust icons does not guarantee success.

Good design, ease of use, and and overall positive user experience can engender more trust in a new visitor. If the site looks shifty or unprofessional or has problems then it’s more likely the user will lose faith. The inclusion of trust icons can push a new visitor or consumer over the edge if they’re already having a positive experience and are willing to place trust in your site.  So trust icons should be part of your site if they fit in with a good design and a user-friendly and functional site. But beware the corollary, the inclusion of too many trust icons can be detrimental to trust. It can make visitors suspicious, why are you trying so hard to convince them to trust you? Further, with each trust icon badge your site makes an external call to the trust icon’s provider, you need to consider what impact multiple external calls will have on your site’s performance. You don’t want your trust icons slowing your site or decreasing the user experience.

In the end though, if your site is well designed and functions well, and you’re looking for something extra to increase conversions over your competitor, then yes, by all means, sign-up for and include a few trust icons on your site. But don’t go over board on the trustmark badges. Concentrate on creating a positive user experience first and add trust icons as the final touches and I’ll predict an increase in sales and/or conversions. Trust me.

Related Reading: 

• TRUST IN E-COMMERCE VENDORS: A TWO-STAGE MODEL by D. Harrison McKnight, Vivek Choudhury, Charles Kacmar
• Online Trust Forming Mechanism: Approaches and An Integrated Model by Xianfeng Zhang, Qin Zhang
• McAfee SECURE Website Certification Leads to Increased Sales
• Developing and Validating Trust Measures for e-Commerce: An Integrative Typology by D. Harrison McKnight, Vivek Choudhury, Charles Kacmar
• Do Hacker Safe / McAfee Secure Badges Increase Sales?