The Council of Better Business Bureau, the organization that monitors ethical business practices, may help to settle the nerves of wary online consumers with the introduction of a new online seal of approval. Rolling out now, the certification program is part of a broad extension of the BBB's standards into the still-shaky market of online commerce and could give a big leg up for small businesses with no name recognition.
The Web site BBBCare seal links to online reports where users can examine the complaint histories of any given business or charity culled from the work of the Bureau's 137 regional offices. If no report is available, the Bureau gets an email alert to follow-up. Consumers can also post their own complaints, but the Bureau is careful to note that they act only as a facilitator and not an arbiter in disputes. The service is identical to the current one now available to consumers over the phone, except that it is free to file a complaint online, but costs US$3.80 over the phone.
According to Emily Green at Forrester Research, the Web site seal allows nascent businesses to "borrow credibility" from the Bureau. "Customers will transfer their faith in something in the real world to the online one," says Green, "but for new business ... it's very hard to build that [faith] from the ground up in the online world."
To attract and assure anxious users, businesses can apply for certification, but costs can be steep. Depending on the size of the company, the right to post the seal costs $250 to $5,000 a year, according to the Los Angeles Times
But the marketplace online may have already reached capacity for these branding imprimaturs. "The online world is very noisy, and there are a lot of little stamps that are starting to clutter up sites," Green says, "and people may be wondering, 'What does this mean?'"
Currently with only two regional focuses (New York and Boston), the Bureau expects to roll out nationwide coverage of more than 1.3 million US businesses later this year.
From the Wired News New York Bureau at Feed magazine.
