How Important Is Online Shopping Security?
As a small business owner you’ve probably heard the clichés and platitudes about keeping online shoppers financial data secure.
It’s even more important than you can possibly imagine.
If your local business is selling anything online straight off your website ulta lock down security is a must. Whether it be one product or you have a full online store with shopping cart and e-commerce enabled security should be your #1 concern for building trust.
If people don’t trust their financial data is safe with your website they won’t even shop much less buy.
So how do you build this trust and security?
The first and easiest thing you can do is to prominently display the logos and buttons of well-known security companies like VeriSign.
If your security is lax, like unfortunately a high percentage of website businesses out there, you could be on the hook if this financial data is hacked or otherwise falls into the wrong hands. Lawsuits are happening all the time and online businesses are losing the majority of those cases.
The numbers show over 80% of credit card data info leaks come from companies which are small, those processing under 20,000 transactions per year. This is straight from Visa so those guys know.
The easiest and most cost-effective way may be to allow a huge payment processor company like Amazon or Google checkout to handle payments for you.
I’ll leave that to you to decide.
Here’s an excerpt from a story on entrepreneur:
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Security precautions also can save you money — and maybe even preserve your business. The costs of a hack can be steep if credit-card information is stolen and you are at fault. Not only could you face huge clean-up expenses, angry customers and scary lawsuits, you also would likely face the wrath of the credit-card companies, which require merchants to abide by what’s known as the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard. The card companies could fine you, force you to undergo expensive security audits or even bar you from accepting any plastic.
Related: Seven Ways to Whip Your Website into Shape
To both instill customer confidence and avoid the horrors of a data breach, experts say a locked down shopping cart system is essential. What’s more, that system should not store any cardholder data. Hacks of these complex software programs are common, and you are a target even if you’re tiny. For example, more than 80 percent of card data compromises investigated by Visa affect merchants that process fewer than 20,000 transactions a year.
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With the dreaded legal ramifications of lax security and more importantly the guillotine effect it can have on your sales if you don’t build massive trust in your security you’ve gotta emphasize credit card security.
Either:
** Pay the money to get a high-end, heavily secured shopping cart software solution and process your own credit card transactions.
** Or work with a trusted company like Amazon or Google checkout to have them process your credit card transactions.
The bonus is you won’t have to worry about chargebacks and merchant accounts being shut down when using the big boys. They handle all those hassles.
How do you plan to move forward on this? I pledge to read and respond to your comments below.
