The growth of ecommerce businesses has grown exponentially in the past few years. And let’s face it, it isn’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon; it looks set to grow and grow. Online stores and making transactions online is a pretty convenient alternative to the ‘traditional’ way to shop. Plus, with so many of us with smartphones right in our palms, it makes it easier than ever to just open your phone and order something.
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The good news as well is that it is a good time for retailers, but even more so for ‘webpreneurs.’ You don’t have to have a physical brick and mortar store to succeed in this industry. You can do it all based online and through social media channels. It is definitely an exciting time to be exploring all things ecommerce.
Alongside this, though, it is important to note that the ecommerce industry is naturally one that is a target for cybercriminals. People’s data, including things like bank card information and personal addresses, can all be taken, as well as other things that can end up being pretty lucrative to cybercriminals. So while it can be challenging to protect your business from this kind of thing, there are certainly some things that you can be doing, or best practices to be remembering, to help you to keep your ecommerce business safe and secure.
For starters, you should think about your hosting service. Are you going to self-host a website or set on up through something like https://woocommerce.com? The latter can work out well as there are plenty of pretty sophisticated security features that come with it.
However, it may not do all that you want it to do. Which is why self-hosting could be what you need instead. If you choose something like VPS, using a site like https://www.mvps.net, then it can offer some additional security, such as offering free backups for your site and data, which is an important thing should there be a hack.
Securing online transactions is the next part of the process. Having an SSL certificate is something that will help you to make sure that you verify the users as well as encrypting data, but will put trust in the buyers that they are buying from a website that is secure and will keep their information secure. Having a URL with https in rather than HTTP will be a step towards having a secure site, as well as giving you the small padlock icon in the address bar, as many users will know and recognize.
Being aware that running an ecommerce business is different to just running a website. As you are handling customer data, you need to remember that data and information need to be handled in a safe and secure manner. It can take time but as the business owner, it is a responsibility that you have to make sure that it is safe and secure.
