I've read in more than one place that you can simply create your own using, you know, a padlock, effective copy and logos of the payment methods you accept and they can be just as effective. Of course, I have no data to back this up but I've thought it myself and think this would probably work. I've worked with VeriSign and TRUSTe, both very good but quite expensive. HackerSafe is more affordable but they're now becoming
McAfee Secure so who knows if this new trustmark will be as effective. I imagine it will. I wouldn't pay to list it with a CSE unless they gave me a 30-day period to gather conversion data to see if the additional costs could be justified. A side note for McAfee: I contacted them a year ago because, like you guys, I wanted to add some more cred to our site (plus we didn't really have much to list on our press page) so I asked if I could state on our site that we were deemed safe by
McAfee SiteAdvisor. They said sure, no problem ... cost = nothing. I wish our designers had used their actual logo when creating the page but again, a no-cost alternative. I've been working in e-commerce since '02 and I know these "trust insignias" work but I'd really like to know how they perform vs. one you create yourself.