I currently maintain two E-commerce website and I am in the process of building two more e-commerce website. This is a combination of my knowledge and experiences with the use of website badges for traffic conversion.

**In this article I am already assuming you have traffic via SEO techniques, Paid advertising, or whatever sources you prefer to use for traffic and you are trying to improve the traffic conversion rate.

One of the major problems people have with an E-Commerce website is getting visitors to buy their products or services.

Web gurus consider traffic conversion to be a science, but I like to think of it as an Art Form tied to a dynamic uphill battle. By dynamic uphill battle, I am referring to the fact that you will have to change your e-commerce website several times until you find the right combination of trust building and website style that works for your store. Once you reach the top of the hill and start getting customers on a consistent basis, then it gets progressively easier and from there all you need to do is make small changes that you can monitor with the intent of increasing conversion rates.

In my experience, the reason people are not buying your products is typically something small and easy to fix. The problem with being the owner of a website is that you can’t see the website as a new visitor would see with a fresh pair eyes. You most likely have looked at your websites hundreds of thousands of times, and a as result, you are near sighted and unable to see what is broken on your website that is hindering conversion. Sometimes this small issue can feel like finding a needle in a haystack.

**On a side note: As long as you have not priced yourself out of the market and your website design doesn’t cause your customers eyes to burn, then all you need to do is work on gaining customer trust to get sales.

I have spent days and weeks researching ways to get people to convert from traffic to customers on a website. I could probably write a book on this subject, but in this article I will be talking about Web Badges and the most effective ways to use them for customer conversion.

Badges, Badges, and More Badges

Many website designers get too carried away with web badges and try to show them all off at the top of the page, which can make the page look cluttered and unprofessional. My personal preference is to only show the most important information and badges at the top of a page.

A typical layout from left to the right would be Telephone Number, Live Chat, SSL, and BBB online. If I do not have live chat or BBB Online, then I will display a small image showing accepted payment types. I prefer to put an SSL badge at the top to show that the website is a secured environment for shopping. An SSL badge is a big seller and probably one of the best, if not the best badge to display on a website. At least, until you get a good following of people who know your website, then you can move this badge to one of the sidebars and use the space for marketing or sales purposes.

Let’s start with the most important badges and information and work down from there.

Telephone Number - One of my older e-commerce websites had a really slow start. It seemed that no matter what I did, I still couldn’t get people to convert to customers. One day I was watching a video about traffic conversion and they mentioned adding a phone number to your website. I figured it was worth a try and thought to myself, what would it hurt by adding the number.

By adding the company phone number to top left of my website I started to see an increase trend in customer conversion.

Now the funny part is, no one has called the number off of the website, but by adding what people consider to be the Security of a phone number in case they get into trouble on the website, has helped my conversion rate tremendously. So if possible I recommend adding a phone number to increase conversion.

Live Chat Button – If you offer this service, I recommend you display it proudly on your website, at the top of the page. Even though people will use the live chat more often then calling you by phone, I still recommend keeping the phone number in the first position at the top of your web page. I do recommend putting the live chat button right after the telephone number or on the far right on the top header.

BBB or BBB online (Better Business Bureau) - If you are signed up and have paid the fees for BBB, then I highly recommend showing the badge on your website.

Along with having a phone number, customers like to think they have a place they can go to view previous customers responses to your service and products. I like to think that customers like having a place to get some justice against bad service or products, such as complaining about your services and products in case they have a bad experience.

Out of the thousands of customers you will have your website; maybe 1 or 2 will go out of their way to leave a post on BBB. No matter how great your service and products are, people typically do not go out of their way to leave a feedback unless they are reminded or nudged in the direction to leave a response. In my opinion about BBB online, no feedback is better then bad feedback. My recommendation is to place the BBBonline badge at the top of a website next to an SSL badge.

Hacker Safe Badges, PCI, etc. -  The website badge for hacker safe is one that I do not display at the top of my pages. To me, most if not all Hacker safe badges are cluttered looking and distracting from what I really want traffic to look at when they come to my websites. I find that putting a Hacker Safe badge on the sidebar is more than enough for traffic conversion. As long your traffic can see the SSL secured website and Telephone number, they are more than happy to purchase products. If you don’t have a telephone number at top, then I would recommend adding this badge to the top of your website.

TrustE - A good service to sign up for and be a part of, but I don’t recommend cluttering up the top of your website with this badge, placing this in a sidebar or at the bottom is fine.

Accepted Payment Images. Credit Cards, Paypal, authorize, etc – I find that people look for payment icons at the bottom of a website. I really do not know why people started doing this, but out of habit, I will usually display a small Credit card image the top and a larger one at the bottom of my website..

Shipping Badges UPS, FedEx, USPS – I prefer to put a shipping badge at the bottom of the page next to the payment types that I accept. If I only accept one shipping method such as UPS, then sometimes I will shrink down the image size and put it next to my Credit card images at the top of my page.

You will no longer need to display badges at the top of your website, once you have built a recognizable company brand name in the marketplace. As soon as you have said recognition, you will no longer need to clutter your website header with badges and logos showing to customers that you are a reliable and trusted website (see Amazon, Ebay, 1800 flowers, borders, etc…). From that point on, you can move your header badges down to the sidebars or the footer positions on your website. You can even make a page on your website to show your trusted affiliations.

But as for the rest of us new comers to the e-commerce business, who have not been establish for years and years, I highly recommend using web badges.

In my opinion, web badges are necessary for traffic conversion. If you display the right badges in the right spots you are headed in great direction. But if you get too carried with badges you will just clutter up your website and make it look unprofessional. Sometimes trying to hard to build trust for your website can have negative repercussions and actually make people feel like they are visiting an untrustworthy website. So please, take my advice and don’t get to carried way with displaying every possible badge known to man kind at the top of your website.

Please feel free to leave feedback or comments pertaining to this article. I am always on the look out for ways to make more money from my e-commerce websites and projects.

My current E-commerce websites and upcoming Websites

Stonegifts.com – Stone Decor
Quarrycollection.com (Wholesale Branch of Stonegifts.com)

These websites will be live soon, but in the design process
Supplystyle.com (This website is in the design building phase and will be featuring Office, home, décor, furniture and ergonomic products.)
Thecollectiblecorner.com (Made for a family member, again it is in the design phase)