The idea of this good-housekeeping seal, is to create a trust seal program that SBWeb members can optionally participate in, which would give them permission to use the seal graphic on their website and other promotional material. The seal would link to a page on the sbweb website, that would validate the seal and provide a page that is customized for the vendor. The customized page would include the vendor's name and website, as well as the seal information below (note: links would link to specific pages on the vendor's website, and so would be different from vendor to vendor)

This seal shares characteristics of the BBBOnline seal (but better) and SSL seals (again - but better).

Companies that show the seal are making a public commitment to their customers, and their partners (i.e. other SBWeb vendors).

The Small Business Web Trust Seal

The SBWeb Trust Seal is a public pledge of business best practices made by online software and service providers. To be accredited by the SBWeb and earn the right to display this seal, the business commits to the promises outlined in following code of conduct and prioritizes partnerships with other accredited companies.

Promises to our Customers

1. Your data is always yours. You can take it when you leave.
2. We will protect your data
3. We will be open and transparent with regards to scheduled and unscheduled downtime (link)
4. We will provide explicit clarity about how we store your data, what we store, when we share it, and how long we keep it (link)
5. We will provide a publically available support policy (link)

Promises to our Partners

1. When an issue comes up, the overriding objective is solving the customer’s problem, not assigning blame or responsibility.
2. We’ll support open industry standards as opposed to closed custom crap
3. We’ll embrace the fact that in some situations, there are no standard data formats
4. We will offer a published mechanism for developer support (link)
5. Healthy competition is good, but we will not be assholes to each other
6. We will be accountable to our peers (at conferences? Discussion? Email? Something)
7. We will be open and transparent with our partners about changes in our product roadmap to the extent that it affects joint customers.
8. We have a publicized mechanism to notify our partners of scheduled and unscheduled downtime (link)[1]
9. Our APIs won’t suck
1. The terms of access to any and all API will be articulated by clear and open qualification criteria (link)
2. Our APIs will have a clear backward and forward compatibility policy (link)
3. Our APIs will have published, versioned documentation with developer notifications (link)[2]
4. Our APIs won’t required passwords for interoperability
5. Where available, Partners will be provided with advance access to API changes.

The foundation of this code of conduct is the belief that customer trust is something earned not given. If you have any concerns with a participating company or a partnership between participating companies, please take the time to submit a story (link to form => send story to partners) so that we can most quickly resolve your concern

[1] Someone write a whitepaper about good notification practices

[2] Someone white a whitepaper about good documentation (e.g. known issues/bugs)