Shopify Trust Badges: How To Gain Your Customers’ Trust

Establishing trust, especially in the e-commerce space is one of the challenges store owners need to accomplish. With the rate of cart abandonment being at 69%, online store owners need to think of ways how to increase consumer confidence.

And one way to do that is through trust badges. These are the stamps or seals that are strategically plastered on store pages to make the consumers feel comfortable in buying their product or availing of their service.

But what are the different types of trust badges? And how does it help with gaining customer trust? These are only some of the questions that we’ll answer in this article. 

We’ll also talk about why trust is important, studies on trust badges, and how to increase consumer confidence beyond those badges.

Why Is Customer Trust Important?

Before we discuss the different Shopify trust badges, it’s important to know why you need to establish trust in the first place.

Customers are what makes businesses work. Without them, your business would be non-existent. It would just burn cash and not give any revenue. It wouldn’t flourish and do what it’s set out to be.  

And a way to avoid these unfortunate scenarios would be to establish trust between you and your customers.

Trust is the core foundation of any relationship. And in business, your relationship with your client is one of the most important things to nourish and keep.

But trust isn’t easily given when money is involved. Whether you’re an online business or a brick-and-mortar store, gaining your customers’ trust is vital to growing your business.

Trust Badges On Shopify

Customers are more cautious than ever when spending money online. How many times have we read people that have worked hard to make money only to be scammed?

These malicious acts that have happened online have made consumers wary of their transactions on the internet. A lot of data breaches have happened throughout the years and a lot of scams have been experienced by people. 

In the online world, SEO and digital marketing can only do so much for a store when it comes to gaining trust and building brand familiarity.

This is why an e-commerce store needs to double its effort in establishing trust between them and its customers. 

In the e-commerce space, trust is a hard thing to establish when you don’t physically see the customers. The same goes for the POV of your clients, they can’t hold the products and see who’s behind the business.

So how does an e-commerce store present trust? In Shopify, they use trust badges. Trust badges are icons you place on your store to make the customer feel confident in buying from you.

Other than gaining trust, these badges also help with your sales and marketing numbers. Tools like predictive dialers, email software, and the likes need a bit of your effort to see changes in your numbers. While trust badges are effortless ways to see an increase in marketing conversion and store sales.

You usually see these badges on the checkout page and landing pages. Because these are parts of the store where the business needs to convert. That’s where people decide to pay money and give more information about themselves.

Other badges also signify the post-check-out experience. Some of them display guarantees and warranties that the store allows.

Successful e-commerce websites have gotten everything down to a tee. Everything you see on their website is strategically placed for a customer to convert. And you can do this for your store as well.

For you to know which trust badge to use, you first need to understand each of their functions. 

Types Of Trust Badges To Add To Your Store

If you don’t know what trust badges are, these are sticker-looking icons or seals that e-commerce stores place on their websites.

It’s not placed there to brag that they are certified but they are plastered for customers to have more faith in the business.

Since trust badges help you in converting more prospects to customers, it’s only important that you know the different types.

Payment Badges

This is the most common badge you’ll see in an e-commerce store. In most cases, you’ll see this badge on the checkout page.

Payment badges are the most widely used because cart abandonment usually happens at this stage. Check-out pages are the last page before a customer releases the payment to the seller. 

This is where all the doubt comes in. All the bad things that have happened to them online usually goes back to their minds at this page.

All of the scam stories they’ve heard from their friends and family are recalled and will cause them to think twice about the decision they’re going to make.

But if you add the logos of the payment providers you accept in your store, it will make your customers be more at ease. Plus it also makes your business more reputable.

By adding familiar brand names like Visa, Mastercard, or Paypal on your checkout page, it gives the customers a sense of safety and trust. It makes your business look like it’s associated with these multinational companies and homegrown names.

Studies showed that if you use familiar names on your checkout page, conversions will be a lot higher and can greatly help in scaling your e-commerce store.

Security Badges

These badges address all the website security concerns of your customers. 

With phishing websites and hacks being still prevalent in today’s online world, customers like to know whether they’re shopping on a safe website or platform.

Luckily, you have these security badges that you can display. 

Any smart shopper knows that an e-commerce store should have an SSL certification. Every top online business has this for its website.

This prevents any leak of information between the customer and the store – making every exchanged information safe. 

With Shopify, every store has this certification.

Other than SSL certification, those McAfee and Norton icons mean that customers are assured that the checkout process will be safe. Seeing those icons is like an indirect way of saying to your customers that their money is safe here.

Security badges go beyond the security protocols of a website. These badges also cover whether your product is 100% organic, baby-safe, made out of pure cotton, etc. 

You’re making your customers know that you’re staying true to what you’re advertising – that your products are indeed made out of specific materials.

Money-back Guarantees

A major roadblock when a customer buys is the possibility of the product not working. This is a very understandable problem since they don’t get to see the product physically. 

And if there’s one thing that makes shoppers at rest, it’s money-back guarantees. As soon as they see this, it can erase 50% of the doubts they have in their minds.

A common question that’s in their head would be “What if the product won’t work? Will I be refunded if that happens?”

Just by showing your money-back guarantee badge, it makes your customers clear out half of their doubts.

It reassures your customers that they don’t have anything to fear when buying from your store. If the product is defective, they know they’ll get refunded.

Some would even say that having a money-back guarantee makes the business more legitimate. It also conveys confidence from the business that their products work.

Free Shipping and Return Badges

These badges are in line with money-back guarantees. Stores use these seals to further push the customer to buy from them. 

Return badges give additional confidence for customers to buy since they are protected in case the product isn’t working. It’s much like a money-back guarantee.

With free shipping badges, these are for customers who are very keen on shipping fees.

Sometimes these customers don’t continue buying the products when they see that the shipping fee exceeds their estimated value.

Having a free shipping badge on your check-out or product page can play an important factor when you’re looking to convert customers.

Take 3wishes for example. They’ve utilized their checkout page to display their hassle-free return process and shipping badges.

Endorsement Badges

This badge shows customers the groups and organizations that your business belongs to. When you belong to third-party organizations or associations that are seen as credible and have high member standards, make sure to ask for a badge from them.

When people see that a credible organization has validated your business as part of their group, customers will be more confident in buying from your store.

That’s why some businesses try to get verified from organizations like Better Business Bureau and Google Customer Reviews. If they have badges from these groups, it solidifies the legitimacy of their store.

In order to be part of the Beter Business Bureau, you need to comply with their accreditation standards which is not an easy task to do.

As for Google Customer Reviews, you’ll need to have at least 100 reviews. This badge displays the store’s rating score of 1-5 stars.

This badge is good for any business. Whether you’re in the reselling business, the service industry, or you’re a business with your own products, having these badges makes your customers feel more at ease when doing business with you.

An example of a business that has greatly leveraged a Google badge would be Reliablesoft. The business gives out SEO certification when customers finish its SEO course. One of the company’s unique selling propositions is that they are a Google Partner.

Of course, people who want to know how to rank in Google would prefer to learn from an accredited Google partner. 

But these badges are not limited to those companies alone. When you’re an Amazon Partner like Aura, you need to display that too.

Endorsement badges are not only limited to the likes of Google and Amazon. As mentioned earlier, if you’re part of a group that has high standards, you can include that as well. 

This is what Paperstreet did with their website. Paperstreet is a company that does digital marketing for law firms.  With this, not only do they have a Google Partner badge but they also have trust badges from different legal marketing groups which shows that they’re fit to be in their niche.

Doing business with big companies and organizations helps boost your company’s reputation and trust factor. So make sure to display yours.

Studies On Trust Badges

When people want to know whether you’re a business that’s worth spending money on, they usually look for online reviews and read what people have to say about you. If they’re not convinced with this, this is where your trust badges can enter the picture.

Sometimes when owners want to prove the legitimacy of their store, they’d use all of the trust badges available. But this just causes confusion for their customers. Some would even think that they are overdoing it.

So to know which trust badge to use, I’ve gathered all relevant data and conclusions from different studies done on these badges. We will see in an objective manner what really matters to people.

Let’s see the effect of trust badges and how they can help with your marketing goals.

In a study done by Blue Fountain Media, it showed that when you place trust badges where they matter the most, it can drastically increase your conversions.

In their experiment, they tested two Request a Quote forms. One had a privacy note while the other had a VeriSign trust seal minus the privacy note.

As you can see the change was very minimal – it’s just the addition of one trust badge. 

But by simply adding this VeriSign Trusted seal, Blue Fountain Media reported that their conversion rate blew up. Their conversion rate has increased by a whopping 42%.

This can mean that customers would rather see a trust badge than a note from the company itself.

Next is a survey by Baymard Institute. They questioned people on what badge gives them the best sense of trust when paying online. 

After filtering the responses and running the survey for three days, they got this result:

Data shows that when customers see Norton and McAfee badges on the store, they’d be more comfortable transacting with that business.

So it’s a good idea to use these badges on store pages where they matter the most.

Another study done by Baymard showed this result when consumers were asked for their reasons for abandonment during checkout:

As you can see, the top reason for checkout abandonment was because of extra costs being too high. These extra costs are the store’s shipping and tax fees. 

With this data alone, we can address the issue by placing a free shipping badge on the checkout. Just like the 3wishes example mentioned earlier.

Statista has also done their research on the top reasons for cart abandonment. They found out that the top reasons were still because of unexpected high shipping fees. This was the same results with their 2015 study on the same topic:

Lastly, a study done by Conversion XL showed that when you use trust badges that come from Paypal, Norton, VeriSign, Google, BBB, Mastercard, and Visa, customers feel more secure when they shop online.

This just shows how familiarity with brands can gain trust from your customers. And using their brand as trust badges for your store can lower cart abandonment rates, increase conversions, increase trust, and sales.

So by analyzing the data from these studies, we can conclude three things:

1. Proper usage of trust badges is important for conversion.

2. High extra fees on shipping and taxes make customers back out from purchase.

3. Familiarity breeds consumer trust and confidence.

Where To Place Your Trust Badges?

Now that you know the importance of trust badges and how they can affect customer conversion, it’s time to understand where to properly place them in your store.

When you have trust badges scattered all over your website, they won’t be as effective as they should be. Certain badges should be strategically placed on each page of your store.

For example, when a customer is skimming through your product page, it makes no sense that you place a VeriSign badge there. It will be more effective to place that badge when you ask for information about them.

Remember each badge addresses a certain issue that your customer might think.

A Mastercard or Visa badge must be used on checkout pages to let the customers know that the payment process is safe. The same thing for free shipping badges, it makes customers see that they have fewer fees to worry about.

Your home page could be plastered with Google verified, BBB accreditation, and Paypal verified. This lets your customers know immediately that your store is legitimate and safe.

Badges that act as seals of security can be used when you ask for their emails or names for your lead generation. This tells them that their information would be kept private between them and your business.

If you want to know where to effectively put your badges, asking your customers directly isn’t a bad idea. It’s the easiest way for you to know how to address their pain points. 

You can do this through paid online surveys, feedback forms, and suggestion forms. This allows you to know directly how you can make your customer experience better.

Gaining Customers’ Trust Beyond The Badges

Gaining customers’ trust shouldn’t be dependent on badges alone. There are a lot of ways to gain customer trust beyond using seals. 

Another way of gaining trust would be asking brands that have used your service if you can use their name and logo to serve as social trust and proof.

An example of this would be Preply. They used these major companies that have used their service to convince prospects that they are legitimate and trustworthy.

The same thing for iNecta. To convince food companies that their food ERP system works wonders, they’ve displayed the different food services that have used it:

Another way to gain trust would be to mention where you’ve been featured. When big publications like Forbes, CNN, CNBC, and ABC have featured your brand, it’s an advantage to display them on your website – just like what Finli did.

Being featured by such big companies is a reputation booster for any business. It will definitely help you increase the percentage of landing a client or customer since they’ve seen that these major corporations have worked with your product. 

Other ways to effectively gain trust from your customers would be to:

• Display honest reviews on your store
• Hold online events to show expertise in your field
• Create a strong social media presence
• Produce quality online content
• Offer excellent customer service
• Telling your brand story
• Be honest and transparent with your business processes
• Know your customers

Conclusion

Trust badges increase the value of your online store. It makes your store look professional, legitimate, and trustworthy.

But when you use these trust badges, make sure you honor them. When you say a 30-day money-back guarantee, make sure to do everything you can to make that true. Because remember that trust is a hard thing to build and an easy thing to break. 

Also, gaining trust from customers should be beyond badges. Showing where you’ve been featured, displaying what companies have used your services, and sharing reviews are just some of the ways to let your customers know more about you.

As mentioned earlier, trust is the core foundation of any relationship. And the same thing applies to the relationship that businesses have with their customers. When a store establishes trust with its customers, lots of positive things can come from it.