VeriSign seal or Twitter badge on search results: both lost
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsAdding either a VeriSign seal or a Twitter follow badge to the search results page made results worse on all three goals tracked.
Bag Servant, a handbag shopping site that sends buyers to affiliate stores, ran this test itself, and it was published as a VWO case study.
The size of the losses was not shared.
- Visits to partner retailer sites: lower for both versions. This is a negative result.
- Site engagement and product exploration: also lower for both versions.
- No percentages, sample size or significance were shared for the losses.
The change
Search results add either a VeriSign seal or a Twitter follow badge.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
The search results page showed listings with no extra trust badges.
Variant
Two versions ran against the original. One added a VeriSign security seal and the other added a Twitter follow badge.
Why it likely lost
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Search results is a browsing page, and visitors there are focused on finding a bag, not worrying about security.
- A security seal makes most sense where people pay or share details, and Bag Servant took no payments itself.
- A Twitter follow badge invites visitors to leave for social media instead of clicking through to a product.
- Extra badges may have added clutter and pulled attention away from the listings.
Caveats: No figures were given for the losses. Bag Servant is an affiliate site, so the conversion is an outbound click to a partner store, not a sale.
Who ran it
Bag Servant ran this test for Bag Servant and published the results (VWO case study). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Bag Servant →
How to run this test on your store
- Hypothesis
- If we add a trust badge to the search results page, then click-throughs will rise because visitors will trust the site more, but we must check whether the badge distracts from the listings.
- Primary metric
- Click-throughs from search results to product or partner pages
- Guardrails
- Search exit rate
- Engagement (pages per session)
- Clicks on the badge itself
- Who should test it
- Sites thinking about adding badges to browse or search pages. Expect this to fail when the page has no payment or data step and visitors are just scanning products; badges usually belong nearer to checkout.
Questions
Do trust badges always increase conversions?
No. Here, both a VeriSign seal and a Twitter badge made the search page worse on every goal.
Where and why you show a badge matters.
Where do security seals work best?
Usually where people enter payment or personal details, such as checkout or sign-up forms.
On a browsing page they may just add noise.
Can social media badges hurt a page?
They can. A follow button gives visitors a way to leave, which is the opposite of what a search or product page needs.
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