Bogus websites designed to steal personal information have made
online shoppers wary of visiting unknown sites, says online travel
company Quickrooms.
The company has invested in technology that gives visitors a
visual indication that the site is genuine after trials showed a 7%
increase in sales.
Quickrooms was using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates
from Verisign, but decided to upgrade to the Extended Validation
(EV) version after a six week trial.
In the trial, Quickbooks ran half of its servers using SSL and
half using
EV SSL to find out whether it made any difference to the number
of bookings visitors made.
The green address bar that EV SSL displays in most browsers
gives users confidence that it is not a phishing site, said Stephen
Mills, product manger at Quickrooms.
"EV SSL helps us provide our customers with the most
trusted online experience as possible," he said.
The EV version of SSL includes a window that displays the name
of the website owner as well as the supplier of the security
certificate.
Most users (93%) prefer to shop with sites displaying the green
bar, according to a survey by Tec Ed Research.
Some 77% of respondents said they would hesitate to shop at a
site that previously showed the green EV bar, but no longer
did.
EV SSL was introduced in mid-2008 by browser developers and SSL
Certification Authorities to combat user fears that online
transactions were insecure.
The standard works with Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and 8,
Mozilla's Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, Safari 3.2, Google Chrome and Flock
2.0.