People need to trust you and your website before they will buy from you. It should go without saying – after all who buys from someone they don’t trust? But website owners have so many things to deal with that it’s easy to overlook this fundamental point.
This is why Symantec recently commissioned a survey from YouGov to find out just how worried people are about the security issues of shopping online and to understand the impact of different signs of website security on their willingness to buy.
Customers are concerned
Almost two thirds (62 percent) of respondents answered ‘yes’ when asked if they had ever not completed a purchase because they did not trust the website. On top of that, 43 percent of respondents said they are ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ worried about the security issues of shopping online.
Thanks to a combination of high-profile website hacks and data leaks and the growing sophistication of cybercriminals’ tactics, people have good reason to be worried about issues like identity theft and credit card fraud.
This speaks directly to the importance of website security: tools and processes that can reassure customers that they are giving their details to someone they can trust and that they are transmitting their data securely.
Powerful padlocks
The survey went on to explore the influence of SSL/TLS certificates on our respondents’ willingness to complete an online purchase and, in particular, the power of the padlock and ‘https’ that you see in the address bar of a site that is protected by SSL/TLS.
You might not think many people look at their browser address bar, but 61 percent of respondents said that they do pay attention to it when they’re purchasing an item online. And not only that, but 79 percent said that they would feel more confident to make an online purchase if there was a padlock in the address bar.
The image we showed our respondents included a green padlock, which indicates the example site has Extended Validation SSL/TLS, which lends credibility not just to the website, but to the website owner as well.
Timeless trust marks
We also looked into the impact of trust marks, which indicate a site is protected by SSL/TLS certificates issued by a particular third-party Certificate Authority.
While the confidence elicited by the padlock and ‘https’ was stronger for younger shoppers, the Norton Secured Seal made people across every age range and nationality in our survey feel more confident.
This is particularly important when you consider that the global spending power of those aged 60 and above will reach $15 trillion by 2020, according to Euromonitor. To stand a chance of getting a slice of that growing pie, your website security has to speak to shoppers of every age.
Trust is a tricky business
Symantec’s full report explores how website security can help you build trust with your customers and how conversions will drop when that trust is broken. Download the report today and learn the value of your customers’ trust and find out how to earn it.