The Shopping Cart Junkie

I’d like to point out two very cool new features on 123 eCart.

The first new feature is that store owners may now offer “soft” (dowloadable) products in their 123 eCart stores.

The second really cool feature is that store owners may now set up user “inputs’ for any product in their catalog.

For example…let’s say that I am selling personalized t-shirts, and will print any slogan you wish on a t-shirt.

Obviously, I need to ask the buyer for the specific slogan to print.

You can now do this by setting up a “user input” for the t-shirts. When the buyer adds this product to his or her cart, he will be asked to provide the slogan he wants printed.

inputs can be set up in the options part of the admin control panel.

Just a quick note, too, about the user help files.

We’ve made a lot of improvements and changes over the last 3 months, and the user manual hasn’t really kept up with it all. we plan to re-write the manual very soon.

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…