Why has Amazon gotten so big over the last couple of decades? Trust. People know that they are going to get what they order, the payment won’t get hacked and that they will get the product in a matter of days.
If you have an ecommerce site, you also have to build trust to have any success. To do that, your site needs to be secure. If people aren’t sure if they can trust your site with their data or payment information, then you aren’t likely to have much success.
It pays off to have a secure site both for your customers and your business. In this article, I will go over several ways you can build a secure ecommerce site and grow your business.
Secure payment processing
The weak link in your site security is your payment portal. This is when new customers have some concerns when entering their information as they aren’t sure if they can trust your payment processing.
You should only use merchant services that have a good track record of not having their customers information get hacked.
In addition to using your typical credit card processors, you should accept alternative payments that people like to use for security. Paypal is an obvious one since many people use it and trust it. There is also a good system whereby customers can get their money back if they aren’t happy so there is an added layer of confidence.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency should also be used for online payment processing as the blockchain is extremely secure and holders like to use it for the added level of security.
Switch to HTTPS
The S in that URL stands for secure. It is an added layer of security for users who come to your site. If you are accepting payments and using people’s cookies, then this is an absolute must.
If you don’t already have one, sign up for an SSL security certification that uses encryption to secure data and gives people a reason to trust your site.
This is especially important now that Google displays a “Not Secure” message for any site that is still HTTP and not HTTPS compliant when a reader enters the site.
Secure your admin area
Hackers looking to get into your site will exploit any loophole they find. Usually they use some software that gains them entry during the sign in process.
Using a security plugin that blocks login attempts from unknown IPs is a good first step to keep hackers out.
Beyond that, though, you’ll need to make sure that you have two factor authentication enabled so if somebody does manage to get past security, they won’t be able to get in without access to your phone or email.
Make regular backups
Besides making your site more secure for your customers’ trust, you need to make sure that you can’t lose your store to hackers who hijack it.
Have your host do regular and automatic backups so if your site does get hacked, you can fix it and have all of your content and data ready to go to get back up and running.
