More and more consumers are shopping online. However, small online traders are missing out because there is also an increasing awareness of online safety and many will only shop online with trusted high street brands or established ecommerce sites such as Amazon. The What Consumer Approved Trader Scheme had been set up to counter this by providing consumers with peace of mind and small online traders with increased sales.

The scheme is open to UK businesses trading online who meet the standards set out in the Code of Practice. The Code of Practice exceeds the requirements of current UK consumer legislation in that a 14 day cooling off period MUST be provided to consumers. Your website will be reviewed by a consumer law expert to ensure compliance and once the standards are met your membership will go live.
There are two levels of membership which are priced with small business budgets in mind. Gold membership is only £45 per year (excl. VAT) and Platinum membership is £60 per year (excl. VAT). There is also a setup fee of £20 (excl. VAT).
The Platinum membership represents excellent value for money as it gives you much more than Gold and only costs an extra £15 per year:

1. You can use an HTML editor to make your listing more attractive as well as providing deep links to content your website.
2. You get 5 pages on the site to customise: The main listing page, a page for offers, a page for images, and a page for documents. This is in addition to the customer review page that is also included with the Gold Membership.
3. You can upload two (125x125) banners that are displayed across the main section of the What Consumer site and the forum section of the site. These are great for raising brand awareness.

Additionally, both memberships provide you with professional membership of our consumer forum where you can blog about your business, create your own forum for your customers or just get stuck into the discussions while promoting your business in the 'signature' attached to all the messages you post. This is currently worth £36 pounds per year (incl. VAT)

In addition to improving consumer confidence in your brand the listing will have a beneficial effect upon your website’s search engine rankings, especially the Platinum membership with the deep links from your listing and the offers page.