The Shopping Cart Junkie

Let’s take a look at security - what is it?

As it relates to your online store, it’s simply this:

You have a website which collects sensitive data from customers. You have a duty to keep that data from falling into the wrong hands. Data like credit card numbers, personal info, etc. - may all be used by malicious characters to hurt your customers. If this happens, you will likely lose your customers, your business, your reputation, and maybe even held liable by the credit card companies.

So, where do we start.

Surely, ensuring that your site is hosted in a secure environment is important. There are thousands of potential vulnerabilities in web software which must be looked at… and we will.

But first, let’s address the biggest security vulnerability- YOU!

Believe it or not, the weakest link in this whole chain is usually the site owner and/ or their employees.

Luckily, implementing a few good practices will close this vulnerability tight as a drum.

Most shopping carts, whether installed on your own website, or hosted web stores, have an administrative area which you log into to configure the cart and retrieve orders. This area is usually password protected. If a bad guy were to discover your password, he could simply waltz right into your admin area and grab your clients data.

As fundamental as this may seem, selecting a good password is a big step towards securing your site and your business.

When selecting a password, avoid using names or dictionary words. Hackers often employ what is called a Brute Force Dictionary attack where they have a program attempt every word in the dictionary as well as common names.

The best password is a mixture of letters and numbers. To make it even better, use a mixture of uppercase and lowercase letters.

Once you have a good password, it’s important to safeguard it.

When logging into your storefront, use a secure login page. This is at an address which begins with https:// instead of http://

Take a look at your home or office network as well. Are you using cable to connect to the Internet? If so, anyone on your cable network can intercept your password if you are not sending it over a secure page. What about your wireless router? Is it secured? It better be.

Finally, change your password often. This makes it exponentially more difficult for a hacker to compromise your account.

Security is a big issue, and an important one.

As an online merchant, you should be particularly concerned with this topic. Accepting credit card information online confers a responsibility to handle that data with care. Nothing could be more embarrassing than explaining to your customers that their credit card number may have been compromised.

For a web store operator, there are quite a few areas to explore when it comes to security.

Over the next few weeks, we will be doing a series of articles, on The Shopping Cart Junkie, concerning shopping cart security.

Stay tuned…

Believe it or not, most online store owners pass up a chance to substantially increase their sales.

Studies estimate that up to 75% of online transactions are abandoned before they are completed. That’s a lot of potential sales leads for someone who is willing to do a little follow up.

Online shoppers abandon carts for several reasons, and understanding those reasons will help you to recover some of those sales.

Many shopping carts are abandoned because the buyer got nervous, or had second thoughts. Maybe they decided to think about things for a while.

If you use a shopping cart which requires the shopper to sign up for an account before adding an item to their cart, you’re in luck. You should have the shoppers telephone number. Give them a call.

It might just be that a friendly phone call with a sincere effort to help complete the sale will calm any fears or give you an opportunity to answer any objections.

Having mentioned this, I want to point out that a shopping cart which forces a shopper to set up an account before adding an item to the cart can deter a fair number of shoppers as well.

If your cart allows a shopper to add items to a cart before giving contact info, you might think that there’s no way to contact the shopper, but that may not be the case. There is a company named Second Bite which contacts your shoppers who abandon carts, and use some pretty advanced technology to try to identify the shopper.

Another reason why orders are not completed is because of failed credit cart transactions. You might think it would be fruitless to follow up on these leads, but the truth is that providing a credit card number online confuses the heck out of some people. A lot of rejections are because they give the wrong address, or don’t understand how to find their security code. A friendly call from you might resolve the situation.

Even a declined transaction might be converted to a sale with a simple phone call. After all, just because the shopper doesn’t have funds today, this doesn’t mean he or she won’t have sufficient funds tomorrow.

Give it a try! You’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Larry Dozier is the Development Manager for 123 eCart - an online shopping cart service - and the owner of http://ecommerce-tutorials.com