Forum Moderators: buckworks
We do, however, have a "hacker-safe" logo one of the versions of payment page. This page has about 2% better conversion, than the same page with no logo. This data took almost a year to accumulate...
Likely ANY seal adds 2% even if it only says "caveat emptor." Few people know Latin and that sounds kinda classy.
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If the BBB seal is important why do fewer B/M stores show it than 30+ years ago? Actually almost none do these days.
The BBB is nothing but a franchised business. Someone owns your local one, just as if they had bought a McDonalds.
The more employees you have, the more you pay. This is a big reason you do NOT see many mid-size and large companies proudly displaying that logo.
Some areas they are run by decent people, some areas they are not. Their job is to sell memberships.
Most of the people who work there don't have a clue about online businesses, and/or ecommerce.
I hate the way they rate businesses - either 'satisfactory' or 'not satisfactory'. When someone clicks a link and sees 'satisfactory', to me that means 'average'. (One of my businesses filled over 10,000 orders one year with ZERO complaints, and I got a 50-cent certificate to frame. No mention of this, however, is made on their website, or on my BBB landing page. My business still rates 'satisfactory'.)
As for the cost, I would only consider it if you are selling very high end products, the type that the profit from a couple of sales during the course of the year could pay for the fees.
Otherwise, I don't think you're going to see a return on your $$$, especially for the 7 Grand you are talking about.
I've been known to close sites that post those BBB seals
To our incredible shock, we actually got a higher % of visitors to register WITHOUT the BB logo. This might be indicative of our site only, but it was a statistically valid sample. I don't work there anymore, but they still no longer have the BB logo on the registration page.
Just something to think about.
I was also looking at some sites that are members this past weekend, the bbb does give them a few back links which I am more than sure google will look favorably on.
So, here I go.... Thanks for the input everyone. I will keep you all posted.
I used to get solicited by the BBB all the time - they were somewhere between replacement window companies and copy machine toner salespeople in terms of aggressive sales efforts. I found that to be a complete turn-off, inasmuch as they try to present themselves as a public service.
Chancet's data is interesting - could it mean that a BBB logo makes a company "look smaller" because BBB memberships are most often associated with small, local operations?
A couple of years ago I tried the "hacker safe" logo in an a/b situation and it hurt conversion. Recently I made a post to that affect on here. Coincidently (?) shortly thereafter I received a call from someone from hacker safe strongly urging me to try it again. It just so happend that I was about to run a bunch of a/b tests on my site. I didn't run hacker safe, but I put BBB and a couple of other seals on the first page of my shopping cart.
a/b tests on my site usually take awhile to hit statistical significance. However, of all the a/b tests I ran in this batch the "shopping cart seals" hit statistical significance to the negative faster than any other test I've seen.
Now I would never claim that these results are transferable to other industries, sites or markets. Our site has been well developed, designed and tested for strong conversion. My theory is that implicit indicators of trust (well designed, quality site) are more important that some explicit claim. I don't think that the average web surfer knows of all of the issues with BBB but I do think that showing seals may trigger some insecurity that may otherwise have been avoided. They land on the shopping cart of a site that they unconsciously trust and see these seals that say "you can trust us" and perhaps they think "oh yeah, maybe it's not safe to be giving out my credit card". It's either that or the increase load time of the images or the seals distract from the action items (checkout) enough to hurt conversion.
Anyways, take it for what it's worth. I've never seen such clear results from an a/b test in a long time.
When we moved from Southern California to Northern California, the local chapter of the BBB complained that we should be a member of THEIR chapter not the Southern California chapter.
The Northern Cal chapter wanted to charge us almost exactly double the money for the online badge and membership as the Southern Cal chapter.
We told them to take a hike, removed the badge and all references to them.
5 years later, our business did not suffer one bit. We continue to have the same growth in a very competitive field without it.
Just my 2 cents from my years as a shopper.
Chip-
The few times that I have seen the BBB seal and I clicked on it, I saw complaints (however valid or invalid), and then decided to take my business elsewhere. Never have I seen the BBB seal, and because of it's existence, make a purchase when I otherwise would not have.
Any Tom, Dick, or Harry can make a complaint to the BBB and it seems they'll post it without doing any due diligence to see if it's a real complaint or not.
[edited by: encyclo at 2:22 am (utc) on Mar. 6, 2007]
[edit reason] no URLs please, see TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]
They started stuttering when I assured them it was no problem to take the link down. My opinion of the BBB dropped way down after that. Like rise2it said, their business is to sell memberships, and the ones in my town don't care how rude they are when they do it. I no longer have any faith in their ratings.
BTW - when you walk into a doctor's office do you immediately turn around after seeing the wall behind him full of his credentials? Is that trying to prove too much trust to you and do you get suspicious?
BBB has helped me with companies that have poor billing/payment processing in so many ways it isn't funny. If you have a rogue item show up on your credit report that claims you owe them money a quick letter to the BBB and the collection agency gets action. If they're not on the BBB they typically ignore you and keep on beeting a dead horse.
so with that said, i typically won't do business with a creditor who won't work with the BBB because the BBB is a great mediator/consumer advocacy group.
The improvement seems negligible to me.
Just saying there was a complaint plays on peoples insecurities and fears and does not lead to a factual appraisal of the companies business practices in my opinion.
If my sites required some sort of consumer protection (they dont for reasons i wont get into here), then i would focus my efforts on Bizrate, shopping.com, or shopzilla ratings. I would even put more faith in an eBay store rating. At least there you get to see all rating PLUS responses to negatives.
The BBB is just a place for the cranky, unloved consumers (a small % of the total) to vent the frustrations of their pathetic lives.
how often does a company hear "i'm going to report you to the bbb for being an excellent company"
it's usually "i'm going to report you to the bbb for doing this and that yadda yadda"
the best customers are usually the ones you never hear from. if they won't take the time to personally thank YOU, why would they waste their time creating a positive bbb report?
unless the bbb meaures reports from ALL of your customers, it's an unbalanced review of one's company.
i buy from a company based on their price and products. i don't care who's had a positive or negative experience with them before me... because it's going to be a different experience for everybody usually. different factors can measure into what makes a successful transaction.
That entity went out of business when the territory was taken over by a different BBB entity with an almost identical name but owned by different people. The latter isn't responsible for the commitments of the former, the national BBB isn't helping, and the building owner sees no prospect for collecting what he is owed.
The annoying thing about BBB is that you get complaints, regardless of what you do - but if you have a brick and mortar presence as well, you get this pretty plaque - or at least our bbb gave us one.
I think HackerSafe has helped us with conversions, but so has Live Chat - since we didn't do multivariate testing with them, I can't provide a statistical answer.
As an aside, HackerSafe charges a boatload of money. Get a price quote from Control Scan first (which is typically cheaper, say $500-$900), and then when HS gives you some nutty price, tell them that Control Scan gave you a better offer. They should match it.
That is, until you get three complaints, and I think then, they give you boot.
Only 3 complaints?
When a company is processing 100's or 1000's of orders a week, the odds are it will not be a member long.
Maybe this is the reason that tacky BBB logo is not plastered on the big time online websites.
Makes the case for the logo denoting a small mom and pop operation I would think.
Only 3 complaints?When a company is processing 100's or 1000's of orders a week, the odds are it will not be a member long.
Maybe this is the reason that tacky BBB logo is not plastered on the big time online websites.
Makes the case for the logo denoting a small mom and pop operation I would think.
In our industry, there are many companies in the $50-100 millon in revenue range that are members... We have found that it has help our conversions along with the hacker safe logo and an 800 number.
