Do media logos on mobile build trust in a buying guide?
Our buying guide showed media and social platform logos on desktop but hid them on mobile. We tested showing them on mobile, plus 2 other trust ideas. Conversion fell 18.4% over 20 days and was not significant.
Not significant Mobile 20 days Not called
The hypothesis
By showing well-known media and social platform logos on mobile, we will give readers a quick reason to trust the guide, resulting in more readers clicking through to the picks.
Readers decide in about half a second whether a site looks trustworthy. On desktop, the guide showed logos of well-known media and social platforms, but mobile readers never saw them.
We tested 3 trust ideas on mobile: showing those logos, stressing the time and effort behind the reviews, and giving the author a larger photo and a short bio.
What we changed
We showed media and social platform logos to mobile readers.
Var A showed the media and social platform logos on mobile and cleaned up their layout. Var B replaced the author line with a note on the time and effort spent reviewing. Var C gave the author a color photo with a border and a short bio. Var B and Var C were paused early so Var A could get more traffic.
- Media and social logos shown on mobile
- Logo area cleaned up
- Author line replaced with review effort note
- Color author photo with a border
- Short author bio added
The result
Conversion fell 18.4% in 20 days and was not significant.
Early on, Var A had a higher click-through rate and more revenue than the control, so we paused Var B and Var C to give it more traffic. Over the full 20 days, conversion came in 18.4% below the control and did not reach our confidence bar.
Order values swung widely, because readers buy many different items once they reach the retailer, so we judged the test on conversion rate.
What we would do next
Logos alone did not lift conversion on mobile.
The logos helped clicks early but did not turn into more sales by the end. We would pair the logos with other trust signals, such as the review team section, rather than test them on their own.