You’ve probably heard that placing trust seals like the VeriSign trust seal clearly visible on your website helps with conversions. I wanted to know if this concept would hold true on our website. I decided to test it out on our Request a Quote form. Back in September, I found that redesigning the form increased form fills by 37 percent. I considered that to be a decent success….until I ran my latest a/b test using the Verisign trust seal. The results were not short of astonishing.
The current form:
Note the sidebar of the form. It does not have the VeriSign trust seal.
The “challenger” form:
Note the sidebar of the form. It has only the Verisign trust seal and nothing about privacy of information.
The difference between the two forms:
The difference in the percentage of visitors to our RAQ form who filled it out was 42 percent, based on testing with Google Website Optimizer. What I found by looking at Google Analytics was even more shocking. The improvement in form fills from organic, non-branded search traffic was 81 percent!
I have trouble believing the results, so I have relaunched the test in order to confirm these findings. What I will also do is figure out if it is necessarily the presence of the VeriSign seal or simply the absence of the note regarding privacy that caused such increases in form fills. Could it be that the note about “Your Privacy” is creating fears that would otherwise not be there, while the VeriSign seal only adds confidence? What about if there is nothing there?
I will be testing further and will share that info right here. Any suggestions? Drop a comment or tweet me.
Join us at NYC Conversion Optimization Showcase!
If you’d like to showcase some of your own conversion optimization examples and have a live discussion once a month in NYC, then join our new Meetup, Conversion Optimization Showcase. Our first Meetup is scheduled for February 15, at our Madison Ave offices.
Could you please post the update on your a/b testing results? Have you confirmed that the increase was caused by the seal or not?
June 11th, 2012 at 1:40 amHi Oleg, I also look forward to updating the post. We are currently testing a blank version vs one with a badge, but still waiting for a statistically significant improvement either way. So far, it looks like a 15% improvement with the badge, but again, the confidence level is below 80%. I would like to update the post when we reached 98% or higher.
June 13th, 2012 at 5:47 pm