ScanAlert recently announced they would be partnering with Yahoo Shopping, a comparison shopping portal powered by Yahoo. ScanAlert and Yahoo are the first companies to bring security badges and comparison shopping together. Now, shoppers who search for products on Yahoo Shopping will see the “Hacker Safe” security badge under participating merchant logos and next to their average ratings. ScanAlert charges merchants around $150.00 per month to participate.

I had a chance to speak a little with Nigel Ravenhill of ScanAlert and he was nice enough to provide me with a ton more detail surrounding this latest announcement. It appears that the Yahoo Shopping partnership is the first of three announcements due to be made before the months end. I was also interested in the way that ScanAlert and Yahoo shared information as to who was participating and who was not with the comparison shopping results.

Our relationship with Yahoo! and the other engines enables our customers to promote their certified security in an environment (comparison shopping engines) even before the customer selects a retailer. (This is about as far up the shopping stream as possible — way north of the shopping cart abandonment stage for example). We submit a daily “white list” of sites to Yahoo! so the list is up-to-date. (Our relationships with the two as yet unannounced shopping engines (both are divisions of publicly traded companies) will be very similar to the Yahoo! arrangement, in terms of delivering a white list to them). For the millions of shoppers who are concerned about security and safety and trust issues, the trustmark image will tip the decision in favor of the HACKER SAFE certified retailer over a competitor.

It looks to me that ScanAlert will also be partnering with Pronto.com, who powers results for both Lycos and Excite Shopping sites. Nigel also sent over some interesting statistics regarding these new partnerships and the numbers that we are dealing with on the CSE’s.

If you aggregate the traffic from the combined properties and their syndications to more than 250 other sites, approx. 30-32% of comparison shoppers (more than 35-40 million shoppers per month) will be able to directly compare retailers based on their security and trustworthiness. With safety and security issues affecting the buying decisions of 50-70% of all online shoppers, retailers win because they can merchandize their certified security credentials, rather than chiefly relying on low prices to stand out. Consumers win because the combination of security information with price, user ratings, and merchant reviews helps them make more informed and trusted buying decisions. Comparison engines win, too, because they gain a new revenue stream and more shopping clicks.

Yahoo happily welcomes ScanAlert Hacker Safe certification and hopes that it will improve customers user experience, help to safeguard their personal information and increase merchant exposure (for participating sites). I am sure the other CSE partners will gladly participate and I am sure others will be anxious to apply down the road.

Combining enhanced security information with price, user ratings, and merchant reviews helps online shoppers make more informed and trusted buying decisions. With the Hacker Safe trustmark included in Yahoo! Shopping listings, consumers can easily identify retailers that have taken additional steps to safeguard customer data.

Benefits To Using ScanAlert Within Yahoo Shopping Include…

• Promote your security to over 50 million shoppers across multiple shopping sites
• Highlight your site in shopping listings
• Tests show 10% more clicks, and 14% more conversions
• Maximize your ad spend ROI

To Nigel: Thanks for the details on this recent announcement Nigel. There is nothing better than information directly from the source and thanks to your help we have been able to do that on this article. I hope you don’t mind that I quoted you so much, it was hard for me to say it any better than you already had. I look forward to talking more about your company’s direction in the future.

Disclaimer: This offer is not made through Yahoo! Shopping, nor does Yahoo! Inc. endorse any claims made herein. Use of the HACKER SAFE seal does not ensure inclusion in the results of the above mentioned comparison shopping portals, nor does it guarantee placement within their results pages.

Yahoo! Shopping is Featured as one of the comparison shopping engines on our Product Listing Guide!