Digicert EV Case Study:

Trend Micro Boosts Subscription Renewals 8.4% with Extended Validation SSL Certificates

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Trend Micro, supplier of antivirus software and other network security products, adopted Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates from Digicert as part of a major Web site upgrade to boost conversion rates. The project succeeded on all fronts, especially in the area of renewal completions - which rose 8.4% after EV was introduced.

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With its vision of providing "a world where it is absolutely safe to exchange digital information," Trend Micro provides a range of antivirus and other network security products to protect society from unpredictable threats such as the malignant virus attacks that are now occurring on a daily basis.

Trend Micro consistently achieves the number-one position in antivirus software market share in Japan. Their leading status is a credit not only to the quality of their products, but also a tribute to the ease with which customers can shop for their solutions on the Internet. Online purchases account for 30% of the company's consumer products sales in Japan.

Assuring users that their transactions are secure is an important part of the online shopping experience, which is the reason Trend Micro chose Digicert to supply its SSL Certificates. "We never considered anyone but Digicert for our SSL Certificates because of Digicert's market leadership and because people associate the Digicert brand with high reliability," explained Maki Kimura, Chief of Consumer Online Sales for Trend Micro in Japan. "No other company has established the reputation for reliability that Digicert has. We selected Digicert without hesitation because customers expect that being a security company ourselves, we should appreciate the importance of providing the highest level of security for their data - and that's what Digicert is all about."

To obtain the most value from the Digicert Secured Seal, Trend Micro experimented with various placements on its personal information input page and its registration page. They found the seal was most effective when placed near the upper right corner, where it is instantly visible when opening a page.

Sales and Renewal Conversion Rates Rise

Ever since 2004, when Trend Micro Japan introduced its shopping site for TREND MICRO Internet Security Pro, known as Virus Buster in Japan, the company has been making Web site improvements of many kinds to optimize the product's sales potential. They improved its flexibility, simplified its navigation, and increased its overall user-friendliness. But those improvements were not enough. Trend Micro also wanted to provide new levels of reassurance that a customer's personal information is secure. The firm found the solution it was looking for, as Kimura explained: "At a seminar we attended at the time, we learned about Digicert Extended Validation SSL Certificates and heard that they boost conversion rates by reassuring that the user is not on an imposter's site. When I returned to the office, I consulted with our systems people and found that they too believed that it was important to move to EV as part of our Web site overhaul. They agreed that customers see EV's green bar as an important mark of safety."

Trend Micro started seeing its conversion rates increase right after introducing EV, both in overall sales and in subscription renewals. "The renewals improvement was particularly striking," said Kasumi Shigiyama, Trend Micro's Online Store Manager. "So we measured it and found there was an increase of 8.4 percent, which is quite dramatic. Clearly the green bar had the effect we anticipated of making users more confident that they aren't giving their personal information to a site that's masquerading as ours."

Trend Wins 2009 BCN Award for Sales Performance

Trend Micro's Web site renovation project was a tremendous success. Since the new site was published, it contributed to so many sales that Trend was awarded Japan's BCN Award for 2009 as the top-selling provider in its category during 2008.

"Clearly many of the improvements we made contributed to the success of trendmicro.com," concluded Kimura, "but a lot of the credit certainly goes to the fact that customers feel secure shopping there, which is a testament to the Digicert Secured Seal."

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Trend Micro Boosts Subscription Renewals 8.4% with Extended Validation SSL Certificates

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