Holiday season is ever so important as well as hectic for ecommerce platforms, and almost every single ecommerce website out there will encounter some of the busiest sales days of the year. It is during this time of the year when online shopping increases by a considerable percentage.
On the other hand, this is also the time when a lot of websites get hacked, which causes your existing and potential customers to lose trust on your business.
After all, ecommerce businesses function mainly based on trust, and when people don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you, as simple as that.
So, how do you earn the trust of your existing and potential customers? One of the best ways is to have a trust badge.
What is a Trust Badge?
In simple words, a trust badge is something that will be given to you by a third party trust badge company that will collect all required data to confirm that your business is indeed real. When there is a trust badge on your website, your visitors will know that your ecommerce website is legit.
For instance, one of the most important trust badges is related to SSL, or secure sockets layer; it gives your customers the confidence that your site is safe to use, allowing them to make secure transmissions, and that it is safe for them to enter their payment details.
Importance of Trust Badges
Though the entire ecommerce industry and ecommerce websites thereby are growing rapidly, so are ecommerce frauds.
While people are still interested in shopping online and find it to be more convenient, they are looking for trustworthy websites, and as an ecommerce business owner, it becomes your responsibility to protect them and their valuable data. This is where trust badges come to your rescue.
First of all, trust badges instill trust in the minds of your potential customers and make them believe that your website is indeed genuine and legit.
Once you position the badges strategically, say on the checkout page, for your visitors to easily notice them, you will increase their trust and they will be less concerned about making transactions on your website.
If you hadn’t known already, cart abandonment is a common issue faced by ecommerce websites, and today, one of the top reasons for the same happens to be lack of trust or security concerns. With trust badges on your website, you get to reduce cart abandonment rate by a significant number.
Types of Trust Badges
An ecommerce website can obtain trust badges from a variety of sources, including your payment processor, hosting company, SSL certificate providers, and other third parties.
Some of the most common types of trust badges are as follows:
✓ Security
As mentioned before, security is perhaps the most important aspect to earn your visitors’ trust, which is where SSL badges come in. Fortunately, SSL protection is now becoming a default aspect to have in an ecommerce website.
This is beneficial for both you and your customers, and by choosing a well-known and reliable SSL certificate provider, you get to build trust even from your potential customers.
If required, you can also go with providers that offer not just SSL certificates, but also other services and functionalities that are beneficial to your business.
✓ Payment Services
In order to give confidence to your customers, one of the best solutions you have in terms of trust badges is to obtain the same from payment services.
This is because payment services integrate with ecommerce websites only after they meet certain key requirements, one of the most common of which is an SSL certificate.
This prevents customers from being redirected to the payment services provider instead of staying on your website during payment, which happens to be what is highly preferred by users, because it makes payment more secure.
One of the best and most popular payment services you can obtain your trust badge from is PayPal.
✓ Business Accreditation Services
Obtaining trust badges from third party business accreditation services is another way to earn trust from your potential customers.
In this case, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) is perhaps the top third party body you can obtain your trust badge from.
This business accreditation service works with US, Canada, and Mexico based companies, and will perform investigation on a company to know if they meet the bureau’s standards and decide on providing accreditation accordingly.
If your ecommerce store is successful in obtaining their trust badge, you can be rest assured that your visitors will view your company as a reliable and genuine option.
How to Get the Most Popular Trust Badges
While the steps to get trust badges may vary slightly from one provider to another, the general process would be as follows:
- First, you choose a company to get your trust badge from, say Norton, PayPal, etc., and sign up for one of their plans.
- The service will inspect your website to make sure that it meets their requirements.
- If everything on your ecommerce platform looks good, it will be issued a trust badge by the service provider.
You can install the badge on your checkout page.
