McAfee SECURE badge on a resume builder's cart: +1.25% conversions
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsAdding a McAfee SECURE trust badge to the cart page lifted paid conversions by about 1.25%.
Uptowork (now Zety), an online resume builder, ran this test on its own site, and it was published as a VWO case study.
The lift is small, and the story also describes a wider cart redesign, so the badge may not be the only change.
- Paid conversion rate: up about 1.25%. The body of the case study gives 1.27%, so treat the exact figure as approximate.
- The team also reported fewer abandoned carts, but no separate number was shared.
- Statistical significance was not stated, so a lift this small could be noise.
The change
The variant adds a McAfee SECURE trust badge to the cart page.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
The cart page of the resume builder had no security badge near the payment step.
Variant
The same cart page showed a McAfee SECURE trust badge on the left side. The case study says the team was also redesigning the cart to feel more secure.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Visitors paying for a resume tool online may worry about card safety, and a known security brand can ease that worry at the payment step.
- The team's own research pointed to a gap in trust as the main reason people left the cart.
- a badge is a small cue, which fits the small size of the lift.
Caveats: The test ran for about a month on the entire user base, but no sample size or confidence level was shared. The case study also mentions a cart redesign, so the badge may not be isolated.
Who ran it
Uptowork ran this test 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 Uptowork →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we add a recognized security badge next to payment on our checkout page, then more trial or free users will pay because they will feel safer entering card details.
- Primary metric
- Paid conversion rate from cart or checkout
- Guardrails
- Checkout abandonment rate
- Refund or chargeback rate
- Page load time
- Who should test it
- SaaS and subscription tools that take card payments from consumers or small businesses who may not know the brand. It will probably do little for well-known products or for buyers who pay by invoice.
Questions
Do security badges increase conversions on a SaaS checkout?
They can, but often by a small amount.
Here a McAfee badge came with a lift of about 1.25% in paid conversions, with no significance stated.
Where should a trust badge go on a checkout page?
Near the point where people enter card details or confirm payment.
That is where worries about security are highest.
Which trust badge works best?
This test only tried McAfee SECURE, so it can't tell you which brand is best.
A seal your audience recognizes is the safest bet to test.