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Badges? Badges? We Don't Need No Stinking Badges?
The origin of the joke line: badges? Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!
(It was copied later by Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles and made into a punch line)
I was finishing up work on one of my microsites (shameless plug: Neuropathy is a serious condition and you should be aware of it) when I came to the decision about badges.
Badges are those little graphics you see on some web pages that assure the reader how safe the page is. "Scanned for viruses" or "Member of the BBB" or "HackerSafe" or "Endorsed by Dr. Phil"
We've all seen them. I looked into how to get some of these. Some are very expensive! Some just require you to fill out an online form. One page had a bunch of the buttons and said to complete the application to receive one. Only there wasn't an application anywhere. So I just lifted one of the images.
One guy was making his own badges. "Approved by Chuck!" it proudly said, with a picture of Chuck (I presume) in the middle of an ornate circle.
So from a web owner standpoint, these badges are valued all over the place, and what do they really say? That you had money to pay somebody? Do the badges actually serve a purpose?
From the best I can tell, they do not serve a useful physical purpose and are a waste of money. However from a perception standpoint, they do seem to do something: they lower reader's anixety levels. Consultants that have multi-variate-tested badges say that some badges will pass through a higher percentage of sales. Nothing spectacular, but a there is a measurable difference.
This, of course, means that as a web-site owner you should purchase/create badges based on your own needs instead of just getting nothing or trying to get everything. And don't associate the value of the bade with the price of the badge. It's likely that homemade badges have the same psychological impact as purchased ones. Especially for educational sites that do not involve e-commerce, all you're doing is helping to relax the reader, which I think is a good thing whether you're selling something or not. Of course, some folks will trash me as trying to be manipulative, and they're right: everything you do as a writer should be manipulative, from the background color of the page to the font size and yes, even the badges. No matter what your goal is as a writer, you had better be manipulative to be effective.
As a surfer, the answer is simple: just use PayPal to make purchases and don't put a lot of stock into badges. And according to the data, most people don't put stock into the badges anyway.
After all, we don't need no stinking badges, man.
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