I agree there are many factors to increase conversion rate, other than Trust Guard seals, such as website design, fast responsive support etc. But Trust Guard also have some good points to increase conversion rate.
They show your clients, that you are not an anonymous company and clients will not be affraid to pay you and fear to receive nothing. Paying on the net and receiving nothing and not get answered for your tickets is very normal on the net nowadays.
Privacy Policy is not just a simple writing. It must include lots of outlines and you should have standard statements in your Privacy Policy. Trust Guard show that you have all standards statements in your Privacy Policy and they feel comfortable that in case, you donât honor your privacy, they can open a privacy resolution in Trust Guard site. I donât think Truste would offer a resolution center.
I think you said PCI scanning is useless and this is up to server and developer to care about security. If you meant that, then you should even uninstall the anti-virus/anti-spyware from your computer too. PCI scanning helps you to find vulnerabilities and solve them. However you are not 100% safe yet, as there would be new virus that no anti-virus will recognize them and you should wait that you get a new version of your anti-virus, this is the same about PCI softwares.
In summary, as long as Trust Guard is there, BBBOnline, Truste and Verisign would be waste of money.
As I said, thereâs still disadvantages to using them⌠they donât show your clients you are not an anonymous company, itâs far too easy to produce a counterfeit trust sign and claim your protected (when your not), and clients wonât know the difference. They donât gaurantee the privacy of your visitors, they just help spot some basic leaks of security, they are NOT a silver bullet solution to the problem of security, you could still be hacked. Your third point is silly, Antivirus guards donât offer 100% protection, they require some common sense from the end user, if you go visiting porn sites, warez portals and the webâs underworld your going to get infected, antivirus guard or not. PCI scanning is the same, if you donât take basic precautions and know what your doing, the PCI might lessen the risks but it wonât eliminate them. As such, if you donât know what you are doing, the PCI compliance is useless because your only going to have whatever protection they issue you, every other eventuality will have been overlooked due to the lack of awareness. When it comes to web security, ignorance is not an excuse.
If there are som reasons why we should use Trust Guard seals, I absolutely donât understand why someone should apply for this sort of awards: http://www.awardsites.com/
This is the most useless website Iâve ever found on the net!
It offers pretty useless and nonsense seals (however they call it âawardâ.) I meant to say this sort of awards are too much more useless than the seals we were talking about in initial post!
You seem to misunderstand, much of the bad is what the end user doesnât know⌠such as whether the seal is genuine (loads of fakes out there) and the reliance individuals have on them to spot security flaws, itâs almost placing your trust in something which really isnât trustworthy (in the sense that itâs not a reliable system)
Itâs true there are some counterfeit seals out there, and honestly some trust seals really are a waste of time and money. However, that doesnât mean they are all bad, and youâd be surprised just how smart shoppers are, most can easily spot a fake.
Trust Guard and McAfee Secure offer security seals that actually change or show the seal is inactive if the site fails a daily scan. So for example, if you see a Trust Guard Security Scanned seal, you know the site has passed a comprehensive 30,000+ point vulnerability scan. If they donât pass the scan you wont see that seal.
There are some very big companies using Trust Guard and McAfee Secureâs trust seals on their websites, and they use them for two main reasons.
1. They want the best security available for their websites (this is in addition to the security measures they already have in place).
2. They know that (the right) trust seals build shopper confidence and increase sales.
I believe the above reasons apply even more to the websites of small and medium sized companies. Most website owners do not have the resources to stay up on all the vulnerabilities. What makes things worse is the fact that new vulnerabilities are opening up all the time, in fact we often find 1,000 or more new vulnerabilities each month. And, you canât blame it on poor hosting because we find vulnerabilities on the best hosting you can buy.
Regardless of the source, you know website security is a real problem when over 73% of all websites fail their first vulnerability scan.
Finally, itâs not a perfect system, but I guarantee that shopping at a site with our Security Scanned seal or McAfee Secureâs seal is a heck of lot safer than just taking your chances on a website.
As stated, they can be counterfeited. The information given by their links back to the specified CSA, however, must also be faked (for a careful visitor).
They do NOT provide any sort of guarantee that the merchant is reputable. They do NOT guarantee that the products will be provided nor that they will be functional. They certainly do not guarantee delivery.
What they DO guarantee is that the connection with the server (for your visitor) is encrypted to protect the visitorâs in formation in transmission ⌠and NOTHING MORE!
It is the merchantâs responsibility to protect any and all sensitive information once it arrives at the server and that includes encrypting the data (if stored and/or sent on to the merchant). Itâs the merchantâs responsibilty to DELETE all data once used (unless the visitorâs been informed that it will be securely stored).
In other words, an SSL cert is only for data transmission. Thatâs only one small piece of the âwarm fuzzyâ that a visitor needs in order to trust an online merchant.
drDave + nimasdj⌠Actually, my research shows that most people cannot spot the difference between a fake and a genuine seal, they take them entirely on face value and assume the badge automatically guarantees accuracy. Sorry to say it but any claim that the audience is smart enough to be able tell the difference between a valid site and an invalid site when the image badge used is IDENTICAL is actually rather silly, itâs like claiming someone could spot a photoshopped image purely on the editor that was used rather than the resulting image. Mcaffee seals like all otherâs cannot stop people taking existing seals and using the images to make a fake seal on their own site which doesnât deactivate or do anything. This is an excellent post on how counter-fitters attempt to achieve such effects (it has info for the public on how to spot a fake): http://www.sitejabber.com/forum/consumer-protection/awareness-of-counterfeit-site-seals-badges-and-guarantees To show you an example see the below (note this is a fake) If I were to stick that on a website, everyone would assume I was BBB accredited (when I am not), 99% of people wouldnât actually verify the seal on the source website: Disclaimer: Just as a note for anyone else reading. Neither me, this post, thread, forum or anything else is BBB accredited (as the result of that image). I am just using it to raise awareness of the potential for fraud (so donât think Iâm trying to promote or actively attempt any kind of dodgy behaviour).
Itâs true that bbb and McAfeeâs seals can easily be copied. Trust Guard however, has made it harder to steal their seals by imbedding the website name and a current date in every seal, that and a few other security features makes a big difference. So youâd be suprised just how few of our seals actually get ripped off.
By your comments, above, Iâm sure it would supprise you just how fast we find out about fake seals. Last year over 200 million people saw Trust Guard seals on sites they visited, and they are quick to let us know when they see one that doesnât look or work right.
I hope that clears things up a bit. Itâs been a great descussion, thanks!
As long as nice Trust Guard with reasonable prices is there, I donât understand why someone should still waste the money and use BBBOnline and Truste seals. They became useless sites on the net after birth of Trust Guard. But McAffee has still one reason for remaining on the net and that is desktop anti-virus application (not PCI Hacker Safe scanner).
drDave, it doesnât surprise me at all, as your offering a paid security service it makes sense that you would actively try and hunt down the fraudsters, all I am saying is the system isnât perfect and public awareness isnât widespread enough (educationally or otherwise) to be able to claim that the potential for fraudulent use isnât at a risk level which could affect the trustworthiness of such products, seals are not a foolproof solution, their just a complacent enhancement.
I asked our paid users if the Trust Guard seals on our website did attract their trust to buy from us and does it affect anything on their final decision to buy from us or no. Here are their answers (I copied only two of them for example, but I have more answers and all of them are saying almost the same thing as below). email signatures are removed for privacy.
No, I knew what type of product I was looking for and purchased on that basis only.
The seals had no affect on my purchase decision at all.
no, not really.
Important for us was that in the forum and via email the response time is short.
So we see that there real pepole behind the site and take care about there customer.
This seals form whatever are useless for our decision!
