Giving your customer the “warm and fuzzies” is standard in the brick-and-mortar world, too. The Los Angeles Department of Public Health (LA DPH) issues all LA restaurants a letter grade establishment rating (A, B or C) indicating how well the establishment adheres to the LA DPH requirements for food preparation and facility cleanliness. What LA residents have come to appreciate about this system is that each restaurant must prominently display their letter grade at the customer entrance. A nice little ‘review’ right there in the window.

This is obviously a great public service, and for those restaurants that achieve ‘A’ ranking (pretty common, actually) the poster in the window reassures customers that ‘this place is ok’. In fact, there are some people who won’t eat at a restaurant without an ‘A’ rating’ so any other grade can actually be a detriment to the business.

As nice as it would be, from a consumer perspective, to have a letter grade like that on every website, we’re not quite there. Nor may we ever get there. Websites vary so much it’s not likely we’ll ever be able to evaluate them all against a single set of criteria. But consumers still like to know that someone else (preferably an authority) has given his/her thumbs-up before trusting a new site. Short of doing some research before visiting a site, one of the best ways for people to know that a site has been reviewed is for that site to obtain and prominently display some sort of certification logo.

It seems simple. And it is. Almost any successful lead generation or e-commerce site on the web now displays these confidence building logos. What isn’t so simple for beginners is picking which vendor to pay to evaluate and certify a site. Here are a couple guidelines one can use to aid in the decision: If the site is in the business of collecting confidential information (i.e.: social security number, credit card or bank account numbers), it should be certified by an SSL Certificate provider. If you fall into this category it will pay to do a little more homework on the various types of SSL Certificates. If the information being collected on a website is less sensitive (i.e.: name, e-mail address), an SSL Certificate may not be justified, but it still may be in the site’s best interest to display other types of identity or security certification logos.

A short list of companies that sell certifications and credibility building logos is below’

GeoTrust: According to their website, they essentially just sell SSL certificates, but their tech support pointed me to their ‘True Site Seal‘ ($119/year)

BBB Online: The Better Business Bureau’s online certification ($565/year). Members must also be registered with the local BBB where their company is headquartered ($899/year).

ScanAlert (HackerSafe): $1,890/yr for certification (10% discount for VeriSign customers); No SSL Certificate required for certification.

TRUSTe: Well recognized ‘Web Privacy’ seal costs $899/year

Thawte: SSL Certificates for $149/year and up

VeriSign: SSL Certificate for $995/yr and up. One of the best recognized names in the business.

EnTrust: SSL Certificates starting at $159/year