I've found, in the small startup I'm working with right now, that those of us with more of a marketing and sales background think seals and stamps and certifica

I've found, in the small startup I'm working with right now, that those of us with more of a marketing and sales background think seals and stamps and certifications are the cat's meow, and those of us with more of an engineering background think they're just noise, and make our websites ugly. I wouldn't trust data from the agency selling the certification - but it'd probably cost more than the certification cost to setup, gather, and analyze your own collection of data. Our group expects to have a mutually beneficial relationship with certain industry groups - we've gone to the trouble of creating our own custom designs that contain the name of the external group to serve the place of a seal that link to the appropriate spots on the websites of those other industry groups. These fit the look of our site better, making our design guys happy, and kept the marketing guys happy because they can display our relationship. Our engineering guys still think they're mostly noise, but grudgingly admit they probably do get peripherally noticed the same way one notices the hash marks in a crosswalk.