Is a security badge displayed?

If you follow the media covering online retail, you may come to believe that every major ecommerce site is using a Hackersafe security badge. After all, it has been demonstrated to lift conversion rates up to 13%. However, within the Top 100 online retailers the majority (56%) do not display ANY security badges within the checkout process. Hackersafe had space on just 18% of the Top 100 sites. Most surprisingly is the sites that used a Verisign security badge consistently had the highest conversion rates of the bunch – 6.9% compared to an average conversion of 5.3%.

In our best estimate, sites using Verisign badges have likely been around the longest and have the greatest brand affinity. This naturally lends itself to having higher conversion rates because of a greater base of repeat purchasers. As with every ecommerce tactic, testing is the best method of assuring which is best for your business, especially because sample sizes were smaller than desired.

Note: Some sites had security badges on most of the site, but for whatever reason removed them during the checkout process. These were counted as not displaying a security badge.

Back to The Ecommerce Checkout Report Index

Complimentary White Paper

The Ecommerce Checkout Report

An in-depth report on the checkout tactics used by the Internet's Top 100 online retailers

Download Report (PDF)