Trust Badge is our most-installed block. Most merchants run it with default config and call it done. We wanted to know: does the layout matter? We ran three variants across 40 Plus merchants for six weeks, controlling for traffic, season, and AOV baseline.
The three variants
Variant A: three horizontal columns with icon + text (the default). Variant B: vertical stack with larger icons + headline + supporting sentence. Variant C: single horizontal row with text only, no icons. Each variant ran for 14 days on rotating subsets of the 40-merchant pool. Two days of warmup, twelve days of measurement.
The hypothesis
Variant B (vertical, big icons, supporting text) would win on first-time visitors because of the larger visual weight. Variant C (text-only) would win on returning visitors because they don't need re-convincing. Variant A would be a wash.
What actually happened
Variant A (the default) won on conversion across the board. Variant B drove a tiny lift on first-time visitors (+0.3% conv) but lost on returning visitors. Variant C never won on any cohort and slightly hurt overall trust score (measured via a post-purchase survey).
Why?
Our best guess: the horizontal three-column layout feels like a 'badge bar' — a familiar pattern across e-commerce. Shoppers recognize the format and parse it without needing to read every word. Variant B's vertical layout was less standard and required reading to understand. Variant C's text-only layout felt thin without iconography.
The takeaway
Defaults matter. We don't ship a default that's randomly chosen — we ship the layout that won the test. If you're tempted to customize the Trust Badge layout heavily, run a 14-day A/B test against the default first. There's a good chance the default beats your customization.