Recently we researched what our clients could do to improve the checkout rates from their online shopping carts, and the subject of which trust seals to display came up.

Initially, there were differing opinions from all team members, about which trust seal each felt was most important and which should be left off.

There is actually a lot of existing testing on this subject and here’s what we concluded based on our totally non-scientific research.

Based on a study published on ActualInsights.com, the seals that people trust the most are:

1. Paypal Verified

2. Verisign

3. McAffee Secure

So if you’re doing any kind of selling online, there’s definitely a benefit in offering Paypal as a checkout option and presenting the seal to generate trust. Include these three as often as you can on your checkout pages.

One of the big conversion gurus on this topic is Eric Graham (the Conversion Doctor) and he strongly advocates the usage of displaying the Hacker Safe seal now owned by McAffee and the Better Business Bureau seal. You can read his full defense of these seals here.

He makes a good case and the best we can say is that it’s worth testing, but every version of your checkout page should keep the big 3 seals mentioned above. Depending on your market, including additional seals could boost conversions.

We have no doubts about the big 3 though, always include those.