Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

It depends on how much I`m spending, what I`m spending it on and whether I`ve heard of the company I`m dealing with in regards to the BBB seal making a difference. 

With respect to the company that I received my certifications in wedding and event planning, for example, I had never heard of them so it was nice to see that they were a BBB company.  What I especially liked in this instance is that the BBB`s site shows how many complaints and what have you they`ve had and what happened with them.  With this particular company, I noticed that they had had some complaints, but that they had at least made an attempt to rectify the situation.  That and the fact that it tells how long they have been in business gave me some comfort that I would not just be throwing my money toward some con-artist and that they actually try to make good with their customers.

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MeLissa
Independent Chocolatier for Dove Chocolate Discoveries http://www.ChocoRocco.com Facebook: http://www.Facebook.com/ChocoRocco

Personally I think that it`s easy to go overboard with certifications and seals on your web site (not to mention awards).  If done in a simple enough way so that users can see the seal as a thing of trust, without it looking like a collection of "I signed up for every service I could find" buttons, then it has value. 

Small business sites in particular will always run the risk of trust issues, since they will be the ones that have the widest variety of implementations.  Some will use paypal, some with say "Give me your number and I`ll personally call you back", some will outsource their credit card processing to another site.   For the user to have something to fall back on that increases their trust, some certification that they know has value, I think would certainly help.

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