An unknown brand has to earn what an established one inherits. The mistake is trying to do it with symbols rather than facts.
What does almost nothing
Generic trust badges. The padlock graphics and "100% secure" seals. Customers have seen them on scam sites and they carry no information.
Stock photography of smiling people. Recognisably stock, and recognising it costs you rather than helping.
"Award-winning" with no award named. Any claim that cannot be checked reads as one that would not survive checking.
What actually works
A specific, checkable review count. "4.9 from 4,105 verified reviews" is a fact someone can test. A row of stars is decoration. The difference in effect is large.
Named third-party verification. A real certification, a named lab, an industry body — stated with the name so it can be looked up.
A returns policy stated plainly on the product page. Not linked in the footer. The number of days, who pays return postage, and how long refunds take.
Real photography of the actual product. Including in a real setting, at real scale.
A visible human. A founder, a team, a physical way to contact you that is not a form. New brands routinely hide all of this and it is the cheapest trust available.
The test for any trust element: could a customer verify it in under a minute if they wanted to? If yes, it builds trust. If no, it is decoration and it may be costing you credibility.
The order to add it in
- Reviews on the product page, with a number, next to the price.
- Returns and delivery terms visible before the buy button.
- Real product photography at scale.
- Named certifications and testing where you have them.
- The people behind the brand somewhere obvious.
If you have no reviews yet
This is the hardest starting position and the answer is to get them rather than fake them. Post-purchase requests to your first fifty customers, incentivised with something small. Twenty genuine reviews with photographs outperform a badge collection by a wide margin, and they compound.
Talk it through
Send us your product page.
We will tell you what a first-time visitor has to take on faith, and which of it you could evidence instead.
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About the author
Manpreet Singh
Manpreet Singh is the founder of Proscube, an ecommerce growth studio. He leads the studio's Shopify and Shopify Plus engineering, headless builds, CRO, and its work on AI engine optimization, and writes its guidance on how to grow a DTC brand without wasting money. He works directly with founders — no account-manager layers between you and the people doing the work — and would rather tell a client not to build something than sell them work they don't need.
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