The Web of Trust team announce a call for nominations for the 2009 WOT awards.

The WOT Top Member award goes to those members who have made a significant contribution to the progress and development of WOT. They serve the community by giving their time, knowledge and advice to help others stay safe when shopping, searching or browsing on the Web.

The WOT Scam Buster award goes to those members who have contributed in the battle for a safe Internet. They may have discovered and reported threats or scams that could do harm to others' computers, personal data and wallets, or contributed to research against cybercrime.

The WOT Publicity award goes to those members who have enthusiastically promoted WOT and safe surfing to other people. Any kind of activity could be eligible - writing on their own blog, forum, Q&A sites, social networking sites, how-to videos, through business or school contacts and or other innovative techniques.

How to nominate someone

We welcome nominations for WOT users who represent the best of WOT in 2009 - trustworthiness, reliability, confidence and team spirit. Award recipients will be selected by the WOT team. Awards will be given out by New Year's Eve. An outstanding nominee in each area will be chosen and profiled in early 2010, along with a description of their accomplishments.

You may add your nomination below or by privately writing to me (click on my user picture to be taken to my board.)

• Put the name of the person you are nominating in the subject line.You may nominate yourself, and you may nominate the same person for more than one award.
• Please include a short explanation of the work the person has done and why you think it is especially important to WOT.
• Please include a link to their work if applicable.
• All nominations must be in by midnight Christmas Eve (December 24, 2009 12:00 PST.)

As the Christmas shopping season begins (Black Friday is November 28), online stores will be offering great prices for popular items. You will be enticed by the deals and limited-time offers, but don't let the excitement of shopping cloud your judgment.

Online security protection

Before you start, make sure you have up-to-date security protection including antivirus software, anti-spyware and WOT browser protection. If your antivirus is expired, try a free trial of Antivirus Pro from our partner Panda Security.

Ensure the e-commerce site is safe

Before doing business with any site, check out the reputation rating given by WOT users. Green ratings mean the WOT community knows and trusts the site. If the rating is yellow or red, consider taking you business, and your credit card number, somewhere else. Look at things like the return policy, shipping information, privacy policy and terms and conditions. If the site displays trust seals, click on them to ensure their validity.

Beware of imposters

Cybercriminals will put up replica type sites that mimic the real site or send phishing emails pretending to be a legitimate company requesting personal financial information. Once again, check the WOT rating, and make sure you can find proper contact information like address and phone number. If you have any doubts at all, no matter how good the deal is, stay away from them entirely.

Add your ratings and comments

Give back to the WOT community by adding your own ratings and comments to sites you have experience with. That way, people who visit that site in the future will know if it is safe and reliable to do business with. Thanks!

Super clever WOT fan PH from France has used the WOT API to create something many people have been asking for - WOT for Opera! And we must say, that It Rocks!

PH utilizes User JavaScript to display WOT ratings in 24 different search engines. Supported languages so far are English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Turkish. PH says on his blog that he can try to add new translations or search engines by request.

Learn more and download PH's WOT for Opera from his blog.

Directions to install user scripts in Opera

WOT icons are placed to the left of the results in Opera. Hover your mouse over the icon to view more rating details.

Thank you PH! We look forward to other innovative uses of WOT. Check out the WOT wiki for information about how you can use the WOT API.

Online shopping is the way to go if you want to ship a gift directly to a recipient or shop at odd hours. This is a great time of year to do it and ratings from the WOT community can guide you when looking for a trustworthy vendor.

Thanksgiving, the American national holiday, falls late in November this year, so consumers started shopping online a few weeks prior to the official start of the shopping season called Black Friday.

What is Black Friday?

Traditionally, the day after Thanksgiving is the busiest shopping day of the year, and the day that retailers went from being “in the red” (in debt) to being “in the black” (making a profit). Today, Black Friday is known to consumers worldwide as the ceremonial kickoff to the holiday shopping season.

Bargains everywhere

Many sites are offering retailer promotional codes and coupon offers for Black Friday and CyberMonday. Here are some promo code sites that have a high reputation with WOT users. (Do you know more? Tell us in the comments.)

Ben's Bargains

Black Friday Info

Steep and Cheap

RetailMeNot

After shopping, add your ratings to WOT

WOT reputation ratings help you stay safe when you are shopping online, so especially after you receive your order, please add your rating of the site in WOT. This is important information for WOT users and site owners.

Trust seals boost confidence and sales

Online retailers, you have time to start a 1-month free trial of WOT's Commuity Trust Network. The Community Trust Network is a program specially designed for online shop owners whose sites have superior reputations. CTN tools like Trust seals help e-commerce and other sites to publicize their trustworthiness and to collect ratings and feedback in a neutral way. Start your trial now.

Web of Trust made a good showing at SIME Stockholm, and went home happy as the top Finnish company, and number Five overall, in the Rising Stars of the North. Starting with about 1,500 young, promising companies in the Nordics, the SIME jury narrowed it down to The Mighty 36.

At the gala awards on Thursday night in Stockholm, as an excited crowd held their collective breath (in between sips of champagne), the 36 nominee's logos slowly disappeared from a large digital screen. Anticipation grew as only a few companies were left. The Finnish contingent, which included other nominees HammerKit and Muxlim, kept their fingers crossed as the WOT logo held its position as the only remaining Finnish company on the board. An audible groan escaped from the audience, when the WOT logo disappeared after reaching the 5th spot.

As expected, Spotify, the peer-to-peer music streaming service, took the top honors. Congratulations to them and to everyone who was nominated. WOT feels humbled to be numbered among so many innovative, bright companies. Keep your eye on all of them!

The SIME Awards were created in 1996 to honor excellence in online communication, business practice and technology; recognize the individuals and organizations responsible; and inspire the Scandinavian Internet industry to world-class performance.

Hi guys! :)

My name’s Surfing Girl and I’m a new employee at WOT. Originally I’m Russian but I live in Finland. My main task is to attract as many Russian Internet users to WOT as possible. I believe that all together we can make the Internet safer.

Yours,

Surfing Girl :)

Всем привет и добро пожаловать! :)

Меня зовут Surfing Girl. Я из России, но живу в Финляндии. С недавнего времени я работаю в WOT и являюсь связующим звеном между WOT и русскими пользователями. Моя задача: познакомить как можно больше русскоязычных пользователей Интернета с WOT. Я буду сообщать о самых интересных новостях и заметках про WOT, собранных по всему миру. Я уверенна, что вместе мы сделаем Интернет безопаснее. Буду очень рада познакомиться с нынешними WOT пользователями и получить советы по расширению русского WOT сообщества.

Yours,

Surfing Girl :)

Sicher online einkaufen

Online shopping season is upon us again, and WOT can help you navigate those too-good-to-be-true bargain websites. You will feel safer doing business with e-commerce sites that the WOT community knows and trusts, so check out the reputation before you give your credit card number. For our German speaking WOT users, take a look at the fantastic video, Sicher online einkaufen, and accompanying article, produced by German television show Angeklickt (Clicked). Host Jörg Schieb recommends using Web of Trust when shopping online to protect yourself and distinguish good websites from the bad.

Herr Schieb described WOT as "an international, virtual consumer network" of connected Internet users exchanging their experiences with online stores and websites. That's an accurate description, and after this weekend we are even more international because lots of new German users joined the WOT community. Danke, Angeklict, for featuring WOT, and Willkommen to all our new German users.

You put a lot of effort into attracting visitors to your site. But you probably have bigger goals than attracting attention. Most website owners want their site to be:

• Trusted
• Engaged with
• Purchased from
• Discussed
• Referred to

If you expect a customer to give you their credit card information, they are going to have to feel a strong level of trust in your business. Showing a high level of professionalism is vital to the credibility of your website.

A few years back Stanford University compiled a list of 10 guidelines for building the credibility of a website. These guidelines are based on three years of research and on several studies about that topic. Although the information is not new, it is still very important if you want to be successful with your online business.

Guidelines for Credibility from Stanford University
What Makes a Website Credible? (PDF)
 

Increase your site’s trustworthiness and credibility 

Consider the look and design of your site

It may not seem fair, but people really do judge a book by its cover, and by extension, a website by its design. Studies have proven that many people look for visual cues when assessing a site’s credibility. When designing your site, pay attention to layout, typography, images, consistency issues, and style because these all affect how users perceive your website and what kind of image you project.

Make your site easy to use

Sites that are easy to navigate are perceived as being more trustworthy. Keep your navigation consistent throughout the entire website. The functionality of a site also contributes to the overall trustworthiness. For example, if the site is down, links are broken, or search features are not helpful, it can hurt how people perceive your site. Check regularly for errors such as broken links, bad grammar, or pages that don't display correctly.

Make it easy to contact you

If the only contact information you supply is an email address or a contact form, it is unlikely that a customer will give you credit card information. Consider including a ‘Contact Us’ page on your website, not only for the convenience of your visitors, but because it’s a tool to convert visitors into customers. For visitors to identify your site as a legitimate business, your Contact Us page should include:

• Company name
• Your name
• Phone number
• A physical address
• A business email address 

Protect your customers' privacy

Let your customers know your information privacy guidelines upfront. Display a link to your privacy policy from every page on your site. If you don’t have one, take a look at these policy generators:

Federal Trade Commission's Guide for Business
OECD Privacy Statement Generator
Direct Marketing Association Privacy Policy Generator

Display a trust seal

Display seals and badges that help instill credibility and confidence. The Community Trust Network trust seals show visitors to your site that it is trusted by the WOT community. If you are a member of the Better Business Bureau, or your local Chamber of Commerce, put that badge on your website too.

Please share other reputation building tips below.

Today WOT is happy to introduce the Community Trust Network. The Community Trust Network (CTN) will help online businesses use their high reputations to improve credibility, build customer trust, increase conversions and boost sales.

The WOT community has rated millions of websites for trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety. That important work protects Internet users worldwide because WOT users recognize that sites lacking privacy protection, support and good security practices can put them at risk. Website owners can benefit from this community-based knowledge by showing customers and visitors that their site is trusted by the WOT community.

The Community Trust Network Seal

By displaying Community Trust Network seals on your site, visitors know instantly that your site is trusted. If the customer wants to verify the authenticity or leave feedback, they click on the seal to open the certificate and rating window.

When you join the Community Trust Network you get:

• Trust seals & Rate us buttons to place on your website
• An editable CTN certificate with your current WOT ratings and comments
• An easy-to-use feedback tool
• Reputation alerts to inform you of changes in your ratings

Sign up your online business for a 1-month free trial now. It takes a few minutes to get started.

Learn more about how the Community Trust Network can help you use your great reputation to the best advantage.

Read the press release