# VeriSign seal or Twitter badge on search results: both lost

- Outcome: Lost
- Page type: Collection page (Ecommerce)
- Elements: Trust badges & security seals, Social proof, authority & press
- Test run by: [Bag Servant](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/bag-servant/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://wingify.com/success-stories/bag-servant/
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/bag-servant-search-page-verisign-twitter-badges/

Adding 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.

## Result

**both lost**

- 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.

## 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)

- 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.

## How to run this test

- 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
- Guardrail: Search exit rate
- Guardrail: Engagement (pages per session)
- Guardrail: 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.

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Credit: Bag Servant ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/bag-servant-search-page-verisign-twitter-badges/).
Usage: Free to use, quote and build on, with credit and a link: name the practitioner or organization that ran the test and link to its LiftArchive page. The results belong to the practitioners who ran and shared them; the summaries and commentary are LiftArchive's.