We have all seen e-commerce stores with and without some sort of “hacker safe” protection. At proimpact7 we highly recommend to all our clients to use a “hacker safe” seal on their website (when collecting payments), in order to create  trust between them and their clients. Did you know that 75 percent of online shoppers surveyed say they have abandoned a retail site due to security concerns? [Internet Retailer, March 2006]

What is also very interesting to note is that many times when businesses work out their project budgets for their new website they very often forget to include security seals.

A case study presented at MarketingSherpa.com on May 6, 2006, reported a security-logo test performed by Petco, a national pet supply retailer. The test involved varying the placements of the Hacker Safe logo across its website to gauge differences in conversion rate gains. The test outcomes produced the following results: – The logo in the lower left corner of the navigation bar resulted in an 8.15 percent increase in conversions. – The logo below the footer on the lower right increased conversions only 1.76 percent. – The logo on the upper left between the search box and the navigation bar increased conversions 8.83 percent.

And even now, 3 years after the experiment the petco.com website is still has the security logo in their header. So clearly it must work for them very well.

And at proimpact7 we love numbers, so lets see the impact of such improvements in terms of dollars in the examples below. Let’s assume that the site was converting at 5% as an starting point, plus have added the percentage improvement of 1.76% and 8.83%. This will allow you to see what such an increase means, provided the other important site aspects are sorted as well like site usability, site navigation,  structure and professional design etc.

conversion increase example

Conclusion: several thousand dollars spent on web site testing and optimization, plus around $1,000+ for the hacker safe seal has, in our example, brought to a client an additional $2,646,351 in revenue. Not bad for several thousand investment. What do you think?

Check out our services usability testing and A/B and Taguchi testing and optimization to help you increase your conversions on your website.