VeriSign Trust Seals: Good for Business or Waste of Money?

For many consumers, the Internet is still considered the Wild, Wild West when it comes to making purchases, making it difficult for small businesses to drive traffic to their websites. In response, small businesses to add their sites to trust seals to help the customer concerns about security and legitimacy convenience.

These seals, offered by various antivirus software makers, including VeriSign and McAfee let consumers know that a site is genuine, no transactions are safe and free of malware. 

"There is a lot of fraudulent activity on the Web these days and consumers are aware of," said Tina Hou, senior product marketing manager for trust services at Symantec, which recently was acquired by VeriSign Identity Authentication and security. "People go to Amazon.com, because they know it's a relatively safe organization. Small businesses do not have that luxury." 

The internet is flooded with scams against hackers looking for people to steal information and it seems no company is off limits, regardless of size. Large companies have recently been the subject of attacks, but as a security breach happens to a small business, restoring trust is almost impossible. Many small businesses do not have the resources to public relations campaigns to launch and establish customer service helps the consumer. 

Trust not only seals a level of comfort to consumers online, but some also have a scan company website daily to identify any malware. 

RELATED LINKS do not Fall for these common mistakes IT when it comes to IT security, Offense Saves Companies "When people come to the site to see the seals and they know the site is a secure site to transact or leaves," said Hou. VeriSign's seal, Hou said that was viewed more than 650 million times a day and a small business will cost $ 299 per year. The stamp is also evident in search results on Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) Bing and some comparison shopping before Web surfers click on links. 

According to Hou, which VeriSign Trust Seal has the added benefit of preventing a small company on a blacklist on Google by catching all malware early. Google scans periodically all tags sites for malware and found websites to host malicious software, forcing users to click through a warning to the site - a devastating blow to a small business. 

Small businesses can choose from a variety of trust seals, including one from the Better Business Bureau and VeriSign has an SSL certificate that consumers know that a site is legitimate, and transactions. Regardless of the type, advises small businesses to keep the seal clearly visible on their websites and in any place that requires customer interaction, such as providing payment information. 

Do they work? 

Trust Seals give small businesses increased credibility, but does it translate into tangible results? According to Hou, Symantec introduced a number of studies with users of the VeriSign Seal and found that sites with a seal 25% increase in traffic on average saw.

According Cazoodle, which search engines is to shop, holiday homes and apartments, has seen an increase of 9.36% on the through traffic in the last eight months for companies whose results include the VeriSign seal.
"Trust is very important these days especially in relation to small businesses," says Hou.


Read more: http://smallbusiness.foxbusiness.com/technology-web/2011/05/27/trust-seals-good-business-waste-money/